2023
Friday, February 10 | 6-8 pm artist demo and social time
February 11 & 12 | workshop
10 am-4 pm EST
@ Townsend Atelier | all levels are welcome!
Instructor: Maria Willison
Learning to sculpt a portrait bust from life is extremely useful for any artist seeking to work on their artistic career regardless of their skill level or medium. In this weekend workshop, students will learn a step-by-step guide on how to sculpt a three-dimensional portrait bust from life in water-based clay. Emphasis will be placed on proportion, anatomy, materials and how to capture a likeness. Friday night there will be a casual meet and greet with the artist and your fellow students followed by a portrait demo by the artist. Then on Saturday and Sunday, students will sculpt their own portrait bust from a live model. Plenty of one-on-one instruction will be given customized for each student’s needs. Students will be working from the same model each day.
There will be a 30 minute lunch break each day. Feel free to bring your lunch if you wish.
Students are required to take home their sculptures after the workshop is over unless they would like to pay an additional $100 fee (paid in class) for Maria to take their sculpture and to hollow them out and fire them at her studio.
CLICK HERE for materials list
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Chattanooga-based figurative sculptor, Maria Willison, enjoys creating work in the round and in relief with water and oil-based clays. She found her true love of art while attending Covenant College for her bachelor’s degree (class of 2010). Maria has won several awards in competitions throughout the country and has shown her work at various locations including Brookgreen Gardens (Murrells Inlet, SC), the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art (Augusta, GA), Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN), Old Courthouse Arts Center (Woodstock, IL), The Rose Center (Morristown, TN), Northshore Gallery of Contemporary Art (Chattanooga, TN), and The Association for Visual Arts (Chattanooga, TN). Also in 2016, and again in 2022, Maria was one of ten competitors selected to compete in the National Sculpture Society’s McDermott Miller Modeling Competition. When Maria is not creating her own pieces and commissions, she is working on donor recognition tile commissions which she took over from another artist who decided to pass the business onto Maria. She also enjoys teaching sculpture workshops and classes at Townsend Atelier.
