Which technique will allow me to progress?
A good art education method should provide you with a solid technical base in order for you to have confidence in your abilities throughout your artistic growth.
Why is Marina Marcolin so excellent with watercolor? How did Sonia Maria Luce Possentini find her prodigious domain of design and nuance? They have a great talent, there is no doubt. An artistic talent nobody knows where it comes from. Aesthetic taste, inspiration, originality, cannot be taught. But at the beginning of the journey, the artist should receive the right advice in order not to get lost in the tangle of the technical problems of the trade, which are many. Both illustrators, like all my other alumni, are today established professionals, and were encouraged to follow only their instincts and try all the techniques since their very first steps into the world of illustration, when years ago I created courses of watercolor experimentation and mixed techniques in Sàrmede – the very same courses that I now propose with further innovations.
I am aware of having become over time, more than a teacher, a talent coach. A coach able to help you take out all that you have inside, what you have always known and that struggles to express itself freely to offer to others the vision of the world that lives in your heart. My motto is: “If you have conceived an image, with the right advice you will be able to realize it”. That unforgettable sunset, that meadow in spring, that fantastic dreamy character, that squirrel glimpsed in an autumn garden … Everything you can imagine, you can illustrate it – otherwise it would never have appeared in your mind. You just need the right technical knowledge so as not to hesitate in the execution of the traits, the color and the contrasts.
With my course I propose to experiment the main techniques of illustration: watercolor, tempera, acrylic, pencil, pastels and ink, and the combinations between them, during a week of intense work that aims not necessarily at obtaining an immediate and concrete result, but rather at giving you the necessary tools to proceed in your artistic journey, to evaluate your progress and not to be discouraged when a subject seems to resist your will to create it. I will teach you how to overcome technical difficulties and, indeed, to come to see difficulties as a desirable challenge, as proofs for your “self-overcoming”.
I can help you build a skills development program that allows you to progress safely. All the advice and teachings I will give in this course are useful not only for illustrators, but also for painters and people who want to learn about the artistic profession in a practical and not just theoretical way. It is not necessary to have a particular artistic preparation already. Atudents are seen as apprentices of the art workshop in which the master is seen at work. I will carry out some work in front of the students and I will propose to each one diversified objectives according to their own stage of development. The program is simple: experiment, try, repeat, try again, insist, during a full immersion week, learning to never give up on your creative purpose. (Arcadio Lobato)