Patricia Watwood Book/DVD Bundle

Nurture creativity and mindfulness with step-by-step drawing lessons, relaxing exercises, and instructive practices. 

The Path of Drawing: Lessons for Everyday Creativity and Mindfulness is an art instructional book on cultivating creativity and drawing as a practice of mindfulness. Published by Monacelli Studio (an imprint of Phaidon Press), was published November 23, 2022. 

About The Path of Drawing:

This book will guide readers to build a creative habit, learn skills in realistic drawing, and developing confidence in one’s individual voice.  Focusing on aspects of mindfulness that are particularly relevant to creative individuals, I discuss overcoming blocks and dealing with emotional challenges to accomplishing work. I share my process for building a personal sourcebook of inspiration and imagination, and illustrate how artists use drawing as a vehicle for exploring ideas and developing complex works. 

Richly illustrated with 56 contemporary and historic artists, with quotes, and poetry, this book is designed to help readers stay inspired, build resilience, and discover a creative path.  

Introducing a practice to enhance mental and spiritual well-being for the enrichment of one’s life in The Path of Drawing, author Patricia Watwood offers readers a systematic approach to drawing that combines basic instruction and mindfulness exercises. Today, many people look to cultivating creativity as a means to improve one’s quality of life, to unplug, to alleviate negative conditions like stress, anxiety, and depression, and to build resilience and enjoy the present moment. Adjacent to such practices as meditation and journaling, drawing is an accessible and personal medium that can facilitate both creativity and mental and spiritual health.

The sample projects in this book are designed to be approachable and manageable in a short period of time. They are not intended to be a rigorous course of study toward mastering complex skills, but, rather, are designed to offer the reader exercises that will help them enjoy time spent working creatively, and develop some technical skills and master simple concepts along the way. Readers should find that daily creative practice and being more open to observing the joys of the world around them can help build qualities of patience, confidence, calm, connectedness, and bravery.

Specifications:

• Size: 254 × 203 mm (10 × 8 in)
  
• 232 Pages

Patricia Watwood: Creating Portraits From Life DVD

With this exclusive video training, you will:

• Learn the most effective techniques for creating charcoal drawings of your subject...
• Discover how to accurately capture the features of the face, neck, head, and shoulders
• Learn how to create an emotional statement that resonates with your viewers
• Shave months or even years off the time it takes you to grow as an artist 

Discover How to Create Beautiful, Expressive, and Lifelike Portraits Even If You Think You Have No Talent

Have you ever wanted to paint a stunning portrait that made your family and friends stop and say:

"That's incredible! Did you REALLY paint that?"

Maybe you're a complete beginner and you love the amazing look of portraits, but you don't know where to begin to learn...

Or maybe you're an experienced painter, but you always seem to run into the typical portrait painting obstacles:

• You have trouble establishing unity among the various features of the face...
• The forms and details of the mouth, eyes, and nose always seem to trip you up...
• You can't seem to get the shadows and contours of the facial anatomy to look quite right...
• Your skin tones feel "flat" and "blotchy"...
• Your portrait just does not feel "museum-quality"...

These are just a few of the challenges you can face when you try to paint a portrait, and it's exactly why some people give up, or never even make the attempt to paint one.

That's the bad news...

Here's the good news:

People believe that it takes talent to become a good painter, but in reality, it's all about having a great teacher, learning a process, and lots of practice. Talent in painting is nothing more than experience.

If you break the process down into manageable steps, ANYONE can paint a breathtaking, expressive, and lifelike portrait.

It's true.

In fact, Patricia Watwood has developed a portrait painting method that's so remarkably effective that you can start working on your own portrait masterpiece this weekend.

Who Is Patricia Watwood?

Patricia Watwood is an amazingly talented artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries and collections all over the world — from New York and San Francisco to Paris and Shanghai.

Patricia earned her MFA with honors at the New York Academy of Art and has studied with Jacob Collins at the Water Street Atelier and Ted Seth Jacobs at the Ecole Albert Defois in France. In case you don't know who they are ... just know they are the best of the best.

Her style is called Contemporary Classicism, and it combines classical techniques with the contemporary language of representation. This fascinating combination is one of the reasons her portraits have such a powerful emotional impact with viewers.

Clearly, Patricia was at the top of our list when it came time to choose a portrait painting master to train you.

It took some begging and pleading, but eventually Patricia agreed to come to our studio and share her unique and easy-to-follow method.

Today we're proud to announce the special pre-launch of Patricia's ALL NEW exclusive video training:Creating Portraits From Life With Patricia Watwood

This is a complete A-to-Z instructional video collection that reveals Patricia's method for painting stunning, museum-quality portraits that will leave your viewers speechless...

Featuring almost 8 hours of in-depth instruction (and a bonus eye-opening interview with Patricia Watwood), this is an incredible resource that will dramatically improve your skills as a painter.

Does this sound like something you'd like to learn?

Some people like to paint portraits to create a timeless image of someone special in their life, like a friend or family member. Portraits, of course, outlive their subjects and hang in the homes of family members for generations.

Others paint them to make a living from their art — because (unlike some specialties) there's no shortage of patrons for portrait artists!

Whatever your reason, we're sure you can agree that portraits have a powerful impact on the viewer that goes far deeper than simple aesthetics...

There's something very personal and even transcendent about viewing portraits, and the remarkable thing is, the experience is 10 times more profound when you are the one painting them!

Here's the thing:

You don't need to spend years of intense training in expensive art schools to learn this process. We've ask Patricia to reveal everything possible, holding nothing back, so you can watch it, try it, watch it again and again, and try it again and again...

In fact, you can begin to paint a beautiful portrait this weekend with Patricia Watwood's Creating Portraits From Life.

Let's take a closer look at what you'll learn inside:

• How to work with your model and establish the right pose for your composition. Oh, and if you don't have a model, the techniques of composition still apply
• The best way to set up your lighting and make the right prop and clothing choices
• The key differences between timeless and contemporary choices that push your design in one direction or the other (and how to choose the right one for you)
• A complete, beginning-to-end tutorial on charcoal drawing
• How to choose and work with the right materials — including setting up your canvas, using vine charcoal, sandpaper, razor knives, erasers, and more
• How to sketch out your drawing and use position, spacing, and perspective to guide you along the way
• Painting the various landmarks of the face — including the corners of the eyes, orbits, nose, the intricate anatomy of the mouth, and more, helping you get a likeness of the sitter fast
• Patricia's underpainting palette and how to work with the various mixtures
• Patricia's favorite brushes for painting portraits and why she chooses them, and her unique approach to brushwork
• Understanding the differences between cool, warm, and transitional tones and how to make them create form
• How to maintain the correct form and tone and the easiest way to make corrections and adjustments as you go
• How to work with transparency and opacity in your portraits to give lifelike texture and believability
• How to adjust values between highlights, soften edges, and remove texture where needed
• What to do if your brushstrokes are too "blotchy"
• How to paint the forehead and cheeks using receding planes, shadows, and edges
• The right way to "mass in" the hair and paint large color areas
• How to paint the background tone around the figure
• Painting the key color notes of various details on the face
• The secret to painting eyes that speak to you and pierce the viewer
• How to paint the form of the nose, and the mistakes most people make
• How to paint the intricate details of the mouth and chin (and the exact right time to do it)
• How to paint the neck and shoulders, including the clavicle and sternomastoid muscles (it's easier than it sounds)
• How to resolve details for clarity and focus
• When to redefine your lines and how to add crisp details and highlight notes

And much, much more...