From Meh to Magnificent - Improve Your Animal Art - Jelly Bean Class with France Bauduin

ONLINE WORKSHOP: 

New Date to be Announced • 10:00a.m. Pacific Time: Approx. 2 hours

Limited to 35 students

Can't attend? All registrants receive a video.

After this class, when you hear, “Your artwork looks amazing; it’s just like a photo!” - you'll be able to confidently respond, “Actually, it looks much better than a photo.” 

Let’s be honest: when it comes to taking pictures of animals, particularly wildlife, achieving that perfect shot—where everything is in focus, the lighting is just right, and the background complements the scene while the animal behaves as you wish—is incredibly rare.

France has developed a PowerPoint presentation designed to assist any animal artist in recognizing the potential of a reference photo, identifying and correcting its flaws, and suggesting improvements through cropping, minor adjustments, background changes, composition tweaks, and even storytelling enhancements. It includes over 50 examples demonstrating how these changes can be made, sometimes simply and other times with the aid of editing software like Photoshop or iPhoto.

While many step-by-step classes focus on replicating a reference photo, this course goes further. It emphasizes enhancing the image with various tips and tricks so that the final artwork surpasses the original reference.

You'll Learn:
• When and how to effectively crop a reference photo.
• When it’s beneficial to change or completely remove the background, with numerous examples and suggestions.
• How to utilize multiple photos to adjust composition, enhance storytelling, or make small changes - what to keep, discard, modify, accentuate, soften.

This course focuses less on specific techniques and more on developing new perspectives when analyzing a reference photo, allowing artists to identify its potential based on their strengths and weaknesses and the goals they wish to achieve. 

Whether the purpose is for a commission, to win an award, or simply for personal satisfaction, every change carries the risk of introducing discrepancies. Guidance will be provided on what to watch for regarding lighting, proportions, and more.

About France: Entirely self-taught, France has been using CP for nearly 25 years, winning awards with CP societies and other Animal Art Competitions. By either changing or combining reference photos she aims to better illustrate strong playful relationships in animals with her art, especially cats, big or small.

What's a Jelly Bean Class?

Small, sweet and hard to stop at just one, Jelly Bean classes are our newest way to help you and your colored pencil life bloom. Each short, focused class is a mere 60 to 90 minutes, but you'll learn lessons you can use for a lifetime. Small projects or single topics that deserve a bit of delving into, Jelly Beans will enhance your skill set and knowledge base in a fun, quick fashion, all from the comfort of your own home. Scheduled on both weekdays and weekends, we hope to accommodate every schedule.

What you need to know:

• You'll receive an email with a link to download a PDF and Zoom instructions, as well as a link to the classroom.
• On the day of the workshop, just before class begins, click on the link to enter the classroom.
• As France leads the workshop, take notes if you need them - and write down your questions to ask at the end.

Requirements:

• Laptop, PC, Mac, tablet or iPad with speakers
• No supplies required. (More info emailed after registration)