Art Workshop "Nature/Still Life" - by Leon Oks

Still life has always been a popular genre for artists–from students who are trying to learn the basics of drawing to seasoned artists who appreciate the subtleties of a good drawing.

This workshop encourages to use a variety of mediums (watercolors, oil, pastels) and techniques (wet-in-wet, dry brush) to create projects that inspire and enrich the students’ experiences.

The projects can be differentiated by grade level and address a variety of skills, aptitudes, learning styles.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN: – Familiarity with materials – Drawing basics (line, shape, value) – Composition (subject choice, position, lighting)

About the artist:

“…Leon Oks, an American artist born in the Ukraine, both invites and defies comparison with modern masters.  Some see the influence of Fauve and Picasso in his works while others believe he has gone well beyond the boundaries established by these great 20th Century artists.

At first, learning to draw on his own, he was later educated and mentored in the classical way of the Great Masters of the Renaissance. Many European publishers of art anthologies have included examples of his art in their compendiums of significant paintings of the past 5 centuries.

To this day, Leon is motivated to paint scenes of the lost Russian villages, and the untamed rural woods and streams of the Ukrainian plateau. He sketches rapid, realistic life studies or landscapes from which emerges an emotion, a memory, or a mood.

Ultimately, imagination takes over and guides the artist in his expressionistic meanderings often causing him to paint through the night unconscious of the passage of time. His sensitivity to and awe of Nature is revealed to us through the use of complex colors, which only exist in Leon’s imagination and on his canvases.  His palette is soft but warm, which is what makes his paintings so approachable and embraceable, and therefore, makes his art hopeful and optimistic…”

Art supplies will be provided, but if you would like to work with your own, please feel free to bring it.

You can purchase 4-workshops series for $80.00. If you would prefer to attend individual workshops, you can purchase individual workshop for $30.00 each.

For information and for signing up, please call (224) 423-5784 Excited to see you there