Fee: $25

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As an artist who works in printmaking, painting, and public murals, Chrissy Poitras has had to become comfortable adapting her practice on the fly. In this class she shares her favourite processes for seamlessly transitioning between digital concept and finished piece. Using digital drawing programs can make it easy to adjust the scale, color and design of your work before ever putting paint or ink to paper.

“For a long time I worked in a sketchbook, drafting ideas and scribbling down notes. While I loved that process, I found it challenging and time-consuming to transition my drawn images to screenprint or mural design. To address these hurdles, I’ve spent the past four years working digitally to create images and sketches for my pattern-making, mural work, oil paintings, and screenprints. In this class you learn how to effortlessly take your ideas from the screen to the canvas. We work through a series of exercises that show you my setup, process and workflow in the program Procreate; all of these strategies and techniques can be applied to your favourite digital drawing program.” – Chrissy Poitras

Materials: not provided. You will need drawing paper (from printer paper or sketch book) and any drawing materials you have (black sharpies, pens, pencil and eraser). Optional materials are watercolour or tempera paints, coloured pencils, and markers. Please have a stable internet connection and a laptop, tablet or desktop computer with Zoom installed. Additional software links will be forwarded to participants after registration.

Biography

Chrissy Poitras is a painter and printmaker and co-owner of Spark Box Studio—an artist residency, print studio and educational facility in Prince Edward County. She graduated from the Queen’s University Bachelor of Fine Art Studio program. Over the past nine years she has been collecting various accidental marks found in her surroundings. Worn tables, subway walls, studio floors are a few of surfaces which inspire her work. These marks, left behind by artists, travelers, friends and family, create a mess of interesting shapes and compositions. She uses these found marks as the subjects of her paintings, drawings and prints. She enjoys the action of layering and developing a new abstracted world through the interaction of the marks. Additionally, Poitras has been developing a collection of botanical pieces that integrate her passion for mark-making with her interest in floral design. Through Spark Box Studio, and as a former professor in the Art and Design Foundations Program at Loyalist College, Poitras has also organized, developed and run courses on a variety of studio arts and arts management topics. She is highly involved in her artistic community and has built a career that is rooted in creation, community and public outreach.