In our efforts to understand painting as a visual language it is important to see what we will paint as an abstract form. To eliminate our preconceived assumptions of what we see and break them down into parts. These essential elements will give us the foundation to understand what we see and allows for a more intuitive paint application. Karen will bring in some of her own costumes and staging backgrounds so as to create a more of her own personal narrative to the workshop. She will discuss ideas on how you can incorporate these pieces and your own elements in order to create your own narratives with meaning. Karen will divide up the workshop into 2 parts. First day, she will discuss her approach to setting up an environment for the model using her props and then from there she will demonstrate her alla prima portrait focusing on the fundamentals of direct painting. The goal is to achieve a 3-dimensional likeness with a simple block-in of the larger shapes and then to build on that by carving out the smaller shapes. Along the way she will discuss, in more detail, the use of value, color and temperature as well as how to adjust edges to create a sense of atmosphere within the painting. There will be one model, with the same pose, for the first 2 days in which Karen will be painting a morning demo then the students will continue to paint in the afternoons. Then the 3rd day we will have a new model with a new pose and the students will paint the entire day with Karen assisting along the way.