Home Lifestyle Online art workshops proving to be a huge success

Online art workshops proving to be a huge success

A series of online art workshops currently in progress titled “Artistic Strategies and Techniques for Oil Painting“ have proved a big success for Laois County Council Arts Office.

Developed by Laois Arthouse and Laois County Council and hosted by the Dunamaise Arts Centre, the series is made up of four morning classes on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th June and Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd July and is presented by renowned artist Blaise Smith RHA.

Delivered via zoom, Blaise brings his wealth of experience teaching and painting to students from his studio using series of cameras and software to show different views of the painting in progress on his easel while talking through his process.

The aim of the workshops is to assist participants of all levels to produce a simple still life painting that achieves a high degree of finish.

The programme was devised to allow artists to avail of highly professional artistic development workshops remotely by bringing the Laois Arthouse Summer Arts programme Online.

Blaise Smith will have a series of Public Instagram and Facebook Live painting sessions every weekend in July where he will paint the landscape in fields around his house (or wherever he can get a good broadband connection!).

Everyone is welcome to drop in to this live feed event and watch the progress of the paintings as they are made.

Check out @blaisesmithartist on instagram or www.blaisesmith.com for more details.

Blaise Smith RHA, from Kilkenny, is a figurative realist painter.

Over a career of thirty years he has exhibited widely and won many awards, most notably recently the Irish arts review Portraiture Prize at the RHA in Dublin for his painting “8 Scientists”.

The making of this large group portrait and the leading Scientists who are in it was the subject of an hour long RTE documentary called Women on Walls. He has exhibited in the National gallery of Ireland with both landscape and portraits, coming second in the Zurich Portrait Award last year.

He won the Eigse Open Award in Visual, Carlow in 2015. He has completed portraits for the collections of the Abbey Theatre, the Dail, Trinity College and the Royal Irish Academy. He is currently Assistant Principal of the RHA Drawing School.

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