The Milans of the Milan Art Institute moved to Sarasota within the last two years and set up a Gallery and now an in-person art school. The warehouse includes space for the Milan Art Store, workshops, and their film studio.
When Dimitra announced her floral painting class, I couldn’t wait to sign up for it.
She was gracious enough to allow me to film her demonstration as well as some of her time she spent working on it while the rest of the class was painting their florals.
On Day One, she demonstrated for 20 minutes. They had floral arrangements we could photograph (one with a softer color scheme of pinks, whites, and creams and one with bolder purples and oranges), snacks, water, coffee, and provided all the art supplies we needed for our botanical oil painting. There were 15 easels with rolling palette stands, an acrylic primed linen canvas, tons of brushes, Milan Art oil paints sorted by warm and cool. On day one they only put out transparent paints that we used with Galkyd Lite to ensure the paintings would be dry the next day.
Dimitra’s brother, Constantino, assisted in providing advice and also printed out sources if the students sent him the reference on the Telegram chat. I just worked off my phone.
First Layer
The idea of the first layer was to lay down a very thin layer of transparent paints using a mix of Galkyd Lite and SoyThin paint thinner to “kill the white” which I failed to do. 😉 We also blocked in our florals using cools to push elements to the back and warms to bring subjects forward.
Next, we used cotton swabs and makeup sponge wedges to subtract highlights from flowers. I didn’t include a vase but most of the students did so they put in the darks of the shadows on the table surface, and we all put the darker areas in the flowers.
Of course, we needed to set up a good color scheme and a pleasing composition, potentially with a triangular focal point flowers to help move the eye around.
If we wanted, they had source materials printed out with bees, butterflies, birds, moths, and chipmunks, etc.
I pretty much got mine to a good point by 3:30pm (class started at 1) and I didn’t want to overwork my painting or make a mess of it, so I videoed Dimitra putting the darks/shadows into her painting to make the flowers pop. She wanted to spend a little more time on it to catch up to the students and to prep it for the next day’s demo. I did go back and add more darks to mine and a few more abstract flowers, but I was at a good stopping point pretty early.
Super excited to get back in the studio again on Saturday. From what I understand we will put a light glaze especially on the background for those of us who left white canvas showing through. We’ll add more darks and pull-out details using lighter paints for the focal flowers.
