Joe Synan
About
Joe Synan has been a painting student at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston for 15 years. In addition, he has attended 17 classes in the painting studio at the Campbell School.
Joe has been a Campbell School instructor since 2019, and has taught 8 painting classes in the online program with Lessonface.
Joe has been a volunteer instructor helping homeless persons to create and sell paintings, and teaches at The Women’s Home, a Houston recovery center.
Joe continues to practice as a leadership consultant. For the past 15 years, Joe has been on the faculty of the Glasscock School at Rice University, teaching leadership.
Joe has degrees in nuclear engineering from M.I.T. and Notre Dame. He also has a Masters degree in Theology.
A runner and mountain hiker - Joe has completed 8 Marathons since 2005, and has hiked to the highest point in 46 states.
ABOUT THIS COURSE
Watercolors are not difficult! This carefully designed class will allow all students to become comfortable in creating watercolor paintings of various subjects and sizes. We'll explore background washes, color contrasts and complements, light and dark emphasis, masking, foreground and background structure, overall composition, and how the eye and mind see art. Produce several finished paintings to examine and refine your understanding of the "best practices" of watercolor painting. Beginners welcome!
Teaching Style
Will you do daily demos at designated times and then let students practice? Will you regroup for feedback and conversation in the afternoon?
I am very flexible as to how we would schedule the time. One option would be to consult with the students and set up a schedule that works best for them.
How will the amount of time spent online compare to independent offline work time?
We would be doing a number of short exercises together. That would be the primary focus. Depending upon the student's interest, we could give homework.
How will the program progress and what will the culminating experience be?
We would do a significant number of very small paintings (approximately 5 x 7) experimenting with a number of the different techniques and covering a number of the different learning objectives.
Toward the end of the course, students would be encouraged to do even larger paintings.
The culminating experience would be a review of all of the paintings by each student and comments by fellow students regarding their progress as a painter.
Curriculum
We will do a large number of relatively short painting exercises. At the end of an exercise we may do some sharing and then allow others to do the exercise again based on what they learned from their classmates.
We will run this class in such a way that the students will feel like they are present with their classmates.
This class would be based on the workshop that the artist teaches at the Campbell School.
The feedback from the participating students in these classes has demonstrated a high level of satisfaction.