HI, I'm Bobbi Heath, and if you're reading this page, you'd probably like to know what it's like to study with me. I hope this helps.
My goal in teaching is to help students get past whatever is stopping them from making a painting that they love. At any given time that's different for each of us, and so in workshops and classes, while I have an overall theme, I work with each student individually.
I've been teaching painting classes and workshops for more than five years in Maine, Massachusetts and Provence. I teach both in the studio and plein air.
Here's what I focus on:
- Simplifying your landscape or still life into simple interlocking shapes of 4 values
- A couple of simple ways to construct a solid composition
- Painting a value map - the shortcut to success
- Color mixing, how to mix bright clean colors and avoid mud
- How to know when you're done
I think it's important for workshop time to be spent with students painting, so my demos are short and focused on one concept. that's followed up with an exercise that cements the concept.
My goal in teaching is to help students get past whatever is stopping them from making a painting that they love. At any given time that's different for each of us, and so in workshops and classes, while I have an overall theme, I work with each student individually.
I've been teaching painting classes and workshops for more than five years in Maine, Massachusetts and Provence. I teach both in the studio and plein air.
Here's what I focus on:
- Simplifying your landscape or still life into simple interlocking shapes of 4 values
- A couple of simple ways to construct a solid composition
- Painting a value map - the shortcut to success
- Color mixing, how to mix bright clean colors and avoid mud
- How to know when you're done
I think it's important for workshop time to be spent with students painting, so my demos are short and focused on one concept. that's followed up with an exercise that cements the concept.
Here are some comments students have made about my teaching style.
- Bobbi's demonstrations are effective and she explains concepts in a variety of ways so that everyone understands them.
- Bobbi boils things down into simple exercises which allow me to learn first hand what I've read about in books that passed me by.
- Bobbi is very organized in how she presents things, which is helpful with so many elements to consider when approaching a painting. This helps create order out of chaos.
- The course of instruction was well thought out and we could build on what we learned the day before.
- Bobbi is very patient and criticizes constructively.
- Bobbi's demonstrations are effective and she explains concepts in a variety of ways so that everyone understands them.
- Bobbi boils things down into simple exercises which allow me to learn first hand what I've read about in books that passed me by.
- Bobbi is very organized in how she presents things, which is helpful with so many elements to consider when approaching a painting. This helps create order out of chaos.
- The course of instruction was well thought out and we could build on what we learned the day before.
- Bobbi is very patient and criticizes constructively.
Here are a few things I've learned in my painting and teaching journey.
One of the first things new students ask me about is mixing color, and how difficult they find it. When I first started painting, I used very bright colors, mostly blues and greens, and I had multiple tubes of each. It wasn't that I was afraid of mixing paint, I just didn't know how to go about it. After a while I found myself wondering, how do I mix the colors that I'm seeing in nature, which are subtle and don't look like they came straight out of a paint tube? First I stumbled on mixing black and yellow to make the dull green of the Maine forest. Then I worked with an instructor who showed me the answer, how to limit my palette and how to mix color. The limited palette helps, because the fewer pigments you mix together the easier it is to create the color you want, and the less chance there is of making mud, which is what we want to avoid.
In my early paintings, I didn't know about values. So I didn't think about them. I was worried about composition, which I thought was about drawing, and I worried about color. Years and many paintings later, my teachers finally got through to me on the importance of value. They had talked about it for a while, but perhaps I wasn't ready. This time I really got it, it's ALL about the values. Have you ever heard the saying "value does all the work but color gets the credit"? That's so true!
And so I began to do value under paintings, a way to start a painting with three to five values of just one color. I usually use burnt sienna, but I've tried some wild colors with sometimes great results. Instructors are now calling these under paintings "value maps", which makes a lot of sense. It's like a roadmap for your painting.
One of the first things new students ask me about is mixing color, and how difficult they find it. When I first started painting, I used very bright colors, mostly blues and greens, and I had multiple tubes of each. It wasn't that I was afraid of mixing paint, I just didn't know how to go about it. After a while I found myself wondering, how do I mix the colors that I'm seeing in nature, which are subtle and don't look like they came straight out of a paint tube? First I stumbled on mixing black and yellow to make the dull green of the Maine forest. Then I worked with an instructor who showed me the answer, how to limit my palette and how to mix color. The limited palette helps, because the fewer pigments you mix together the easier it is to create the color you want, and the less chance there is of making mud, which is what we want to avoid.
In my early paintings, I didn't know about values. So I didn't think about them. I was worried about composition, which I thought was about drawing, and I worried about color. Years and many paintings later, my teachers finally got through to me on the importance of value. They had talked about it for a while, but perhaps I wasn't ready. This time I really got it, it's ALL about the values. Have you ever heard the saying "value does all the work but color gets the credit"? That's so true!
And so I began to do value under paintings, a way to start a painting with three to five values of just one color. I usually use burnt sienna, but I've tried some wild colors with sometimes great results. Instructors are now calling these under paintings "value maps", which makes a lot of sense. It's like a roadmap for your painting.