Strengthen your artwork with the limitless creative possibilities of Chinese and watercolor painting. Lian will teach his approach on design, composition and color with clear, practical easy-to-follow demonstrations and instruction. The first 2 days, you will practice “Chinese Brush Painting” in a spontaneous style and then in detail. The following 3 days, your skills will continue to develop with Lian’s one-of-a-kind color pouring, blowing, and blending method. Participate in helpful critiques as he takes you step by step through several paintings. Lian is the author of four Chinese Painting Instructional Books.
 
Location: Bend, Oregon
Instructor: Lian Quan Zhen
Cost: $655
Sponsor: Art in the Mountains
Website, email, 503.930.4572

Discover how to create fresh, lifelike paintings of a variety of animals as you explore composition, color, texture, and storytelling. In this workshop, learn how to realistically capture texture without obsessing over detail, choose a dynamic point of view, mix colors to promote interest, and vary your brushwork for different effects. Through daily demonstrations, Susan will highlight various facets of painting animals followed by one-on-one assistance in your production of painted samples to reinforce each principle discussed. Expect to take home many small studies to refer to when working independently on your own projects. You will leave this workshop with the knowledge and tools necessary for portraying a variety of animals convincingly.
 
Location: Fish Creek, Wisconsin
Instructor: Susan Ploughe, www.SusanPloughe.com
Cost: Members: $450, Non-Members: $490
Sponsor: Peninsula School of Art
Website, email, (920) 868-3455

Improve your understanding of quadruped anatomy by studying the beautiful and elegant doe. Learn to build an armature and develop the bone and muscle structure in clay through three-dimensional anatomical reference and contemporary media sources. Lecture and demonstration will address sculpting techniques and materials in nontechnical terms. Includes live animal study at an off-site location.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Diane Collins
Cost: For Credit: $625, Non-Credit: $495, Lab Fee: $10
Sponsor: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Website, email, 215-972-7632

Lian begins the workshop with teaching basic watercolor painting techniques – composition and coloring – “color pouring and blending” and “paint around.” There are four to six short demonstrations each day with practice sessions in-between. During critiques, Lian will help you understand possible next steps and how to touch up your paintings. Lian Quan Zhen is a highly sought-after workshop watercolor and Chinese painting artist and teacher in the United States and abroad. After immigrating to the United States in 1985, he received a BA from University of California at Berkeley in 1992 and a master’s degree in architecture from MIT in 1996. Visit lianspainting.com.
 
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
Instructor: Lian Quan Zhen
Cost: $375 Museum members/ $400 non-members
Sponsor: Huntsville Museum of Art
Website, email, 256-535-4350 x222

Collaging exotic birds in mixed media. An impressionistic painted backdrop sets the stage for exotic birds in colorful collaged plumage with a variety of media. Learn to create collage papers exclusively with Gelli Plate mono printing techniques. In addition to collage we will experiment with adding (and subtracting) charcoal, watercolor pencil, metallic leaf, pigment pens, and found objects such as string, yarn, wrappers, feathers, and anything else a magpie might steal!
 
Location: La Pointe, Wisconsin
Instructor: Elizabeth St. Hilaire, www.paperpaintings.com
Cost: $770
Sponsor: Madeline Island School of the Arts
Website, email, (715) 747-2054