Does anyone know if there are painting classes or seminars available that a person could go to and ask all the silly questions in western Canada? Just curious.
James

Hi James. I am in the same boat. Maybe we can corner Glenn Hamilton when he gets back to Spruce Grove from his teaching job in Scotland. He certainly ranks up there with the best as far as I'm concerned. I am not sure when he is back or if he would even be interested in it but it might be worth asking.


Gary Daugherty

In februari there is a two days class with oils and acrylic.
But you have to come to the Netherlands.
here is the link: http://www.scalemodelfactory.nl/start.html

marc

Wish santa brings some painting classes to Chania,beautifull Greece too...
Anyway,glad I can have all the help I could need in here,
so thank you all guys...

The schutzhund club that I belong to regularly brings in teachers, trainers, judges, training helpers, etc into our area for seminars. Same with several of the other organizations I belong to. All it takes is a willing teacher, and some coordination to put together your own seminar. Some teachers look for a stipend, some do it for the love of teaching and the promotion of the subject. Get enough folks together, come up with a tuition fee, a place for the instructor/s to stay and travel costs and viola. Your very own seminar. By cleverly promoting the event and making sure you keep group sizes to effective, working sizes (40 guys packed around a table to watch 1 guy paint frankly sucks). You can have a pretty effective working weekend with everyone walking away with something. If you think you're really going to get some good turnout, bring in a couple of instructors and structure the weekend around both. Allowing them to split groups and exchange information offering a variety of techniques. Or bring one in to sculpt, one to paint.
If you're not willing to do it on your own, approach one of the local clubs and see if they want to help out with something like this in conjunction with a contest.

Hi Boys;

While I am still here in Paisley until next August, there are a couple of excellent figure people in Alberta that might be able to help you out. For starters Brent Fordham is a regular planetfigure poster, and lives in Camrose. He and I get together every so often for a coffee and figure chat in Edmonton, and plan to do so when I get back. There is also an outstanding painter who goes by the name "Lancer" on this forum as well, and he lives in Edmonton. A very wise man who has many tricks of the trade to share. As for expert advice, there is one fellow in Edmonton, Rick Taylor, who has achieved an extremely high standard of painting, winning numerable medals at major shows including the World Expo, but Rick is a little harder to track down for advice because of his work schedule. And in Calgary, you have available to you a chap called Scott D. (can't remember last name), but he is the owner of a small model shop that stocks some figures called the Small Soldier (www.smallsoldier.ca). I don't know how active Scott is now that he is running a business, but he is a truly great sculptor and painter.

Unfortunately, that's everybody I know in Alberta doing figures to any degree of seriousness. With you two guys maybe we can all get together one Saturday for a painting session and idea exchange? Where there's a will there's a way. Hope this helps, and if all else fails James, give me a shout and I'll do what I can from here.

Cheers;
Glenn

P.S.
What was with the -48 degrees in early December!!?? I'm not sure I want to come back if that's going to be the case!

!!!!!!

Yeah, it's probably a bit warmer where you are now, eh?

Hi James,

Brent here from Camrose, AB. All good advice from Glenn, above. I'd add also that Scott at the Small Soldier in Calgary (see link above in Glenn's post) puts on figure painting classes once or twice a year. Drop him an email to see when the next one is.

Best,

Brent

Thanks for all the replies. It gives me something to think about.
James