Richard Christian Nelson will be teaching three weekend workshops in Tryon this fall. 

They will begin with a three-day still life workshop Sept. 22-24. Next will be a portrait workshop Oct.13-15, and lastly an autumn landscape workshop Oct. 27-29. The classes will meet in Tryon from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. each day. The landscape workshop participants will venture out to paint in the area each day. You can get more information, sign up, and pay at richnelson.com, email rich@richnelson.com or call 828-817-3784.

 The workshops are open to all media, but oils will be emphasized, and they are open to all ages and skill levels.

For the still life workshop, we’ll concentrate on all of the steps of the painting process by creating compositions with simple objects such as fruit, vegetables, pottery and such.  

The portrait workshop artists will work from live models on the fundamentals of anatomy, form and light to improve our skills at painting the portrait and figure.

In the landscape workshop artists will work on the fundamentals of painting outdoors. We will paint the beautiful North Carolina foothills for three days. If it is raining we will stay indoors and decide if we prefer to work on still life or hire a model. 

In all workshops there will be lectures and demos by Nelson, and group ‘critiques’; mostly just putting the work up and having each artist say ‘how it’s going.’

Richard Christian Nelson is a gallery and portrait artist who lives in Tryon, N.C. He earned his BFA from the College of Creative Studies in Detroit, Mich. in 1988. This year his painting ‘Emilie’ was in the Oil Painters of America Annual Salon in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his study of Jodie Karr was just accepted into the OPA’s Eastern Regional Exhibition in St Simons, Ga.

Rich taught anatomy, figure drawing and painting at CCS part time after graduating. He does a number of workshops in various locations each year. Usually he begins each workshop with introductions, a lecture on his materials and approach, a lecture on light and shadow, and a lecture on color. He then does a demo on site.

After that each artist sets up and paints, with a number of class reviews throughout the week. Rich often keeps painting and demoing if the class would like, as he is interested in demonstrating and participating in the “process” of painting.

Visit richnelson.com/workshops, email rich@richnelson.com or call 828-817-3784 for more information. You can view his work at richardchristiannelson.com.

– submitted by Rich Nelson