The Fundamentals of Figurative Composition, with Scott Breton (2024)

2 November 2024 @ 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

|Recurring Event (See all)

An event every week that begins at 10:00 am on Saturday, repeating until 16 November 2024

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Details

Date:
2 November 2024
Time:
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Event Category:

Venue

Upstairs at Petrie Terrace Gallery
3/162 Petrie Terrace
Brisbane, QLD 4000 Australia
Phone:
07 3367 1977

How can we make figurative paintings that are beautiful, engaging and meaningful?

While this is deeply personal question, there are certain traditional principles and techniques for making pictures that have stood the test of time.

Once you understand these principles, a whole spectrum of possibilities opens up to you within the field of painting (and really for any visual art or design field). You will not be trapped in your habits but will have creative quesions to explore new possibilities.

After all, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Andrew Wyeth (and many other lesser known names) have been there before, providing us with inspiration that we are free to recombine in our own ways to capture the elusive qualities and meanings that pull us towards making paintings.

Session 1: Fundamentals of Pictorial Composition 10:00am – 12:30pm

Lunch break

Session 2: Composing from the Life Model 1:30 – 4:00pm

Mornings Sessions: Fundamentals of Pictorial Design

During each of the 5 morning sessions we will go through some practical aspect of pictorial composition and strategies for applying this to your own creative practise. These principles, rules of thumb, and technical approaches make it that much more likely that your pictures will be arresting to your audience, as well as opening up the kind of joy that is to be found in composing once you you understand the parameters we are playing with. We will look at the traditional topics:

  • linear design
  • tonal design
  • colour design (and basic colour theory)
  • “meta-design” : Light, Atmosphere, Space, and Time
  • methods for modelling complex scenes, and relating to design
  • materials for composing and executing beautiful paintings
  • considerations for finding meaning and poetry in

Afternoon Sessions: Composing from the Life Model

The model will hold one pose (after a few warm up poses) for the duration of the 2.5 hour session, and we will approach making a composition using one of 4 compositional frameworks: Narrative, Associative, Observational and Material Expressionist. The fifth of the five sessions will give you the chance to choose your favourite approach from the 4 and go that way with your final composition of the course.

What’s included:

  • Permanent access to my Guide to Composition as it continues to develop and even after it becomes a paid online course, full of practical diagrams and exercises
  • Practical tuition – I will get you working with each of the concepts as quickly as possible in class – these are practical skills even as they are conceptually rich
  • Life model fees are all included in your enrolment fees
  • Feedback and support – before or after class, and by email
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About Scott Breton:

Scott Breton is a figurative fine artist from Brisbane, Australia.

After completing a science degree (BSc (Genetics) University of Queensland) and contemplating a career in biotechnology, Scott committed fully to pursuing art, continuing a classically leaning arts education and practice begun much earlier. In 2012 Scott won the highly contested A.M.E. Bale Travelling Scholarship, Australia’s largest national prize for developing the careers of traditional representational artists. This allowed Scott to do further study with contemporary classical artists in the US and Europe, and has contributed to his view of the relevance of Renaissance thinking and aesthetics in the Arts in the 21st century.

Using a range of traditional drawing, painting and sculpting media as well as exploring digital counterparts to these, Scott sees plastic composition rather than any particular media as the core of the classical ethos. He is interested in how this sense of plasticity can be utilised by the contemporary artist. This endeavour seems to closely mirror a more general exploration of how the specifics of the contemporary human experience relate to and can be informed by insights about the human condition that have emerged across all of human history.

To continue and expand his work in fine art education, Scott was a cofounder of The International Arts and Culture Group (TIAC Group) in 2016, and now spends his time between Brisbane, Australia and Florence, Italy, working on his compositions and TIAC’s arts education projects.

Praise for Scott Breton:

“Scott is a fantastic teacher. Understands the figure deeply and carefully walks his students through each step in their figure drawing journey. Is able to engage with students at all levels. I learnt so much from his classical life drawing course and would highly recommend him to anyone looking to further their figure drawing skills. So much gratitude :)”

 

“Scott is a really talented artist and excellent teacher. I feel lucky to have been able to do some classes with him, I learned a lot.”

 

“Fantastic course- the best i have come across for life drawing.. I really enjoyed it. Scott has structured the sessions really well, with excellent supporting notes and lots of guided practice in class. I will definitely be doing the class again later in the year. Thanks Scott. 😍”

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