Setting Up For Robert Johnson's Painting Workshop At The Art Guild Of Port Washington

In July, The Art Guild of Port Washington was lucky enough to host Robert Johnson for a very rare New York area workshop.  I have a ton of photos from the workshop itself, but I thought you might like to see how we set up for a still life workshop.

I've been to several workshops where there are no set ups and the students are left to fend for themselves, often with lackluster props.  Also, there can be people in a workshop who are new to still life and may not know how to do a proper set up.   And don't get me started on sharing a set up in an expensive workshop.

When we do still life at The Art Guild, everyone has their own set up, already set up the day before the class starts.

We have a lot of props there as two of us are still life artists and there are also a lot of "community" props, things that people have donated and are for everyone to use.

Luckily, my studio mate is a very talented floral designer as well as a painter, so she is able to buy flowers at a distributor for the classes, and she makes the most amazing floral arrangements.

The first thing I do is get my own supplies together and pack them in my paint box.  It is one less thing to worry about in the midst of everything else that is going on.

Next up is purchasing supplies.  For a still life/floral workshop, we gather a few buckets full of flowers, and a variety of fruit ( lemons, red and green grapes, oranges, apples, etc).

We then get all the props in one place.  Fabrics, vases, small objects, crystal pieces and presentation boards to hold up the fabrics and create a background.

And then it begins.  We spend a LOT of time with the set ups.  It's quite rare that we just pull some objects and fruit and create a set up.  They go through lots of changes.  Fruit, objects and flowers go in and out until the still life is just right.  This can take some time and people often look at us like we are nuts, but what is the point in doing a workshop with all of these beautiful things if you are not going to make it the best it can be, right?

These are some of the set ups that we ended up with.  You may be wondering what the little post it notes on some of the shelves are for.  When using fruit in a still life, I like to include one or two pieces of cut fruit, but I don't want to do that until the morning of the workshop, so we put a mini post it in the spot we want to use for the fruit slice as a reminder.  This way it's easy to just come in and cut the fruit and not have to think about where it belongs.

Two other things I should mention.  Lighting is very important.  In a workshop, there is rarely natural light for everyone, so we use spotlights with daylight bulbs.  We just hook them up at either side of the still life to create shadows and they work very well.  The other is how we actually make the set up.  We use milk crates to create height and then lay wooden shelves on top of them.  If you go to Home Depot, you can just tell them the size you want and they will cut them up right there.  We then stained them with Minwax Dark Walnut.  We clip the fabric to the presentation boards and then you are ready to start styling.

When people see me doing set ups, they will often ask how I know when it's right.  I wish I had an answer to that question, but unfortunately, I don't.  I do follow two basic rules.  The still life should be a triangle and should read from left to right.  But the rest is just having an eye for when it is right.  I take my time with the set ups and if there has to be a ten minute discussion of whether there should be one grape or two on the right side of the still life, that is what happens.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't rush in order to get it done quickly and if something doesn't look quite right, change it.  No need to have anything that drags down the set up.

It is also really helpful to consult books on the type of set ups you want to do.  We had Robert Johnson's book open while we were doing these to make sure they were along the line of what he would want to paint.

In addition to Robert's book,  David Leffel and Sherrie McGraw's books are a great source of inspiration for this type of still life set up, as well as any book on Chardin or the Dutch Masters.  I look at them all the time and they are so helpful.

The students were so happy with the set ups and thanked us for making them available, which was so nice.  I want people at a workshop to be happy and if they are paying for the class, they deserve the best you can give. ( Can you tell I recently had a crappy workshop??? :)

I always love a behind the scenes look, so I hope you enjoyed this one.  I'll have a separate post about the workshop itself.  It was amazing.  If you have any questions about setting up a still life or a workshop, leave me a comment.  I'm happy to try and help!

** I just want to make clear as per the rules that I was not comped in any way for anything in this post.  I paid for the workshop and helped out as a volunteer. The props and supplies that were used were purchased by us or were things we already owned.**