Dave Santillanes Workshop
Instructor: Dave Santillanes
Dates: June 2-4, 2023
Class Limit: 16 students
Tuition: $595.00
Level: All Levels
Dave’s Recommended Supply List
Dave Santillanes will be teaching a 3-day plein air painting workshop. Locations will be both landscape and seascape. Artists will learn to quickly gather the necessary visual information needed to complete a painting in the field. During the second half of the workshop, they will analyze the information they gathered, interpreting color and value relationships in order to create depth in an atmospheric landscape/seascape painting.
Bio: Dave Santillanes
As my painting style continues to evolve my goal with each piece is not a literal rendering of the scene. Instead, it is to capture and convey its essence.
In terms of composition, I look for simplicity. I’ve found many opportunities to simplify a scene without compromising its sense of ‘place’. Therefore I’ll seek out the big abstract shapes in the landscape and use them for the underlying design concept. And because I’ve departed from a literal interpretation, I’m free to rearrange elements to fit this concept. In this way, I am able to describe the scene in my own “words”.
Finally, capturing the essence of a landscape involves a realistic rendering of color, light, and atmosphere. This requires direct observation and is why most of my paintings begin in the field with a plein air study. But studying the physical aspects of nature isn’t the only reason I paint outdoors; for me, the sensory experience of being there is equally important. There’s no better way to get to know a place on earth than to sit for a couple of hours and contemplate it while painting. This intense observation brings a spiritual intimacy with the scene that can’t be achieved in mere passing and allows me to “speak” with complete sincerity in each painting.
