Constance Pierce Schedules Second Workshop July 25-26

Amateur artists enjoy learning from master artist Constance Pierce.

Aspiring artists have a second opportunity to learn from the best at a University of Mississippi Museum workshop hosted by Constance Pierce July 25-27. The workshop was added due to a large number of requests following the initial workshop in June.

“Learning to Sketch from Museum Masters” is a two-day weekend event July 25-26 in the museum’s studios and galleries. Sessions run from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. each day. The cost is $30 for members and $45 for non-members and includes all materials.

Space is limited. and pre-registration is required. To register online, visit here or come by the museum front desk during normal hours of operation, Tuesday through Saturday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

“Our first ‘Learning to Sketch from Museum Masters with Constance Pierce’ filled up as soon as registration opened and was such a success that we have decided to offer this weekend workshop again at the end of July,” said Emily McCauley, education curator. “At the last workshop, several of the participants arrived saying they could barely draw a stick figure, and to see the work they created after just one weekend was truly exciting.”

The session on Saturday will demonstrate how to prepare sketchbook pages in advance by creating delicate watercolor monotypes. Students will then practice ‘paraphrase’ sketching of master artists’ drawings while experimenting with watercolor pencils and wash.

On Sunday, actual sketching begins in the Museum galleries. Participants use the watercolor pages created the prior afternoon to gesturally sketch over them while viewing works on site in the museum galleries. A surprising synchronicity often emerges as the sketches combine with the background colors.

To complete the afternoon, the group will return to the studio to add final accents with wash.

“This two-step process is especially useful for museum sketching, because the wet medium is utilized before the dry sketching that is required in galleries and museums,” McCauley said.

Pierce has twice exhibited her sketchbooks at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She served as a professor of drawing, painting and art journals at St. Bonaventure University in New York and was a Visiting Artist at Millsaps College in Jackson.

Her sketchbooks are in the collection of the National Gallery of Art Rare Book Library, the Yale Center for British Art, Prints and Drawings and at the Oxford Treehouse Gallery. She exhibited in Japan in June. 

Courtesy of Edwin Smith and the Ole Miss News Desk