Medium: Applicable to artists working in all mediums
Level: All levels welcome
Class Dates: Wednesdays, August 5-19, 2026
Class Times:
• 11:00 am-1:30 pm Pacific time
• 2:00 pm-4:30 pm Eastern time
• 7:00 pm-9:30 pm UK time
This three-session class explores the unleashing of color from the constraints of traditional value-based painting technique established during the Renaissance, to the color innovations of Cezanne and the Impressionists. By the turn of the 20th century, color reins, with new ways to compose and express using vivid and dynamic colors!
You’ll make sketchbook color studies in the manner of each artist using a variety of media, including gouache, watercolor, artist crayons, and color pencils. Your subject matter will vary depending on the artist being studied, including still life and portrait.
A brief description of the focus for each session’s color experiments:
1. Rembrandt, “Value before Color”. Rembrandt, a baroque artist, made dramatically lit portrait paintings that appear sculpted with paint using the traditional value-based painting technique. His expressive portrait paintings present the human condition with high contrast lights and darks, punctuated by a limited color palette.
2. Cezanne, “Color before Value”. Paul Cezanne rejected the traditional method of value-based painting by exploring color as a means to express how he perceived the natural world in still lifes, portraits and landscapes. Cezanne’s revolutionary painting innovations continue to influence generations of artists to this day.
3. Impressionists, “Color as Light”. Monet, Morisot, and Pissarro made Impressionist paintings that investigated how color is perceived as light bouncing off the surface of things, using vivid colors made with fleeting brushwork. Above all, they aimed to capture the transient effects of light and atmosphere rather than copying the local color of an object.
In stock
$225.00
Open to all painters of any medium: Expand and break color habits by practicing other artists’ color ideas in sketchbooks with mixed media.
There’s more to color than color theory. Throughout history, painters have reimagined how to use color in their compositions, either rejecting color rules or integrating them into a new form of personal expression.
This series of three courses explores individual artist’s color concepts, moving through time chronologically. Each class session is dedicated to one artist, or a group of artists within one movement, such as Impressionism. Your color experiments will be made in the manner of the artist’s work being studied using a variety of media, including gouache, watercolor, artist crayons, and color pencils. Your subject matter will vary depending on the artist, including still life, landscape, portrait, or abstraction.
Pick and choose your course or take all three! Explore color through art history as you practice innovative ways to express ideas, feelings, and the natural world—painter by painter!
Barbara Fugate is a painter committed to making drawings and paintings that express life rather than imitate it. Discovering and experiencing “how things are” rather than “what they are” continues to inspire and drive Fugate’s art and art instruction. Fugate received a BFA from Western Kentucky University and a MFA in painting from Miami University of Ohio. Fugate has taught expressive drawing and painting classes and workshops in Seattle, as well as international workshops for over 25 years. Schools where Fugate has taught include Gage Academy of Art, Seattle Pacific University, Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts (Victoria, BC), La Conner Art Workshops, as well as her own Seattle Weekend Art Workshops. Fugate’s artwork is published in “The Best of Drawing and Sketching” by Terry Sullivan, “Landscape Painting” by Mitchell Albala, and Margaret Davidson’s book, “Contemporary Drawing”.
About Color Explorations, Artist by Artist Series:
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