Susan Aitcheson, Woodland, Portsmouth Arts Guild
Susan Aitcheson, Woodland

Pastel Painting

Valerie Albert Weingard & Susan Aitcheson

Instructors

October 22nd and 23rd
Tuesday and Wednesday, 10am – 3pm
Location:  Portsmouth Arts Guild
Tuition:
$165 Members
$195 Non-members
Valerie Albert Weingard, Red Shoes, Portsmouth Arts Guild
Valerie Albert Weingard, Red Shoes 
Whether you are an experienced pastelist or new to this expressive medium, all are welcome. Various pastel techniques will be discussed, and instructor demonstrations will be provided each morning. Participants are welcome to work from their own reference photos or from a still life they set up in class. This class includes helpful one-on-one time at the easel with both instructors and a group critique at the end of the day. Emphasis is placed on drawing skills, planning a successful composition and achieving accurate values while exploring this versatile and vibrant medium.

About Susan

As an architect, shaping buildings and working with three-dimensional space in ways that are aesthetically pleasing has greatly influenced my sense of shaping space as a painter on a two-dimensional surface.  I try to draw the viewer, as I would in architectural design, through both vast and intimate spaces, small to large, large to small, and toward light or into darkness, to create for the viewer a dynamic experience on canvas. Where does the light take you and what is the relationship of scale – can you feel it? What is the dimension of your experience in a big sky or a small garden scene?
We bring our passions into our art, as I do, engaging my love for travel – time spent hiking, camping and kayaking in my work. With an impressionist feel I transpose this depth of space and texture of the plant world to my landscape painting. Emotions experienced outdoors I call to mind, express them in my art, and hope to convey the wild beauty of mountains, rivers, seashores, forest landscapes to my audience.

About Valerie

One of Valerie’s earliest memories is of herself decorating the walls her family’s Southern California bungalow with her drawings of everyone she knew and loved. Fifty years later, now firmly planted in Southern Massachusetts; her childhood passion has remained a constant throughout her life.
Valerie received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Philadelphia College of Art. In 1988 she came to Providence, RI for a visit, fell in love with the area, as well as a toy designer who resided there, and never really left. For the next 20 years, Valerie ran a free-lance design company, specializing in illustration and toy design, still painting portraits and figures whenever she could. For the last decade, Valerie has been able to devote herself to painting fulltime, exhibiting her work, and currently has a thriving commissioned portrait business. She has had recent shows at the Attleboro Arts Museum, and at Providence Art Club, where she is an exhibiting member.
What interests Valerie the most, and what she has always strived for in painting portraits and figures, is to portray aspects of the subjects’ humanity, the real poetry that is part of the person.
Skilled at painting in several media, Valerie chooses the material for the feeling she would like to convey. She loves watercolor for its’ spontaneity, and loves to paint with it alone, or as an underpainting to give her pastels a lively base that she overlays with intense pigment.