Got any plans for April? Here’s where I’m going to be:
David Chelsea is reading: Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous
by Christopher Bonanos
“The publishers of PleinAir Magazine (sister publication to Realism Today) have announced they will be producing and hosting an innovative virtual art training experience where artists from all over the world will learn from some of today’s most talented and successful professional artists and instructors.
The event, PleinAir Live, will be held online April 15-17, 2021. Interest in plein air painting, the practice of painting outdoors, has grown exponentially as more artists blend their love of painting with their love of the outdoors.
The event features the world’s top artists doing painting demonstrations, along with talks and discussions. Attendees can go into breakout rooms with others for further discussion, and there is a paint-along for the entire group at the end of each day.
In 2020, over 1,000 artists from all around the world attended the first PleinAir Live virtual event (see the 2020 recap of Plein Air Live here).
Magazine publisher and event host B. Eric Rhoads says, “For years we’ve been hosting annual conventions and expos and always have excellent attendance. However, the pandemic caused us to quickly find new and different ways to meet our mission of teaching millions of people to paint.
“We figured out how to deliver a high-quality and entertaining online experience to our worldwide audience that is more than just a Zoom call. Because we have video studios and a soundstage, we are able to produce an event at the quality level of network television.
“Since that first global virtual event, we’ve held several others, including Realism Live and Watercolor Live, reaching several thousand artists.”
Artist and gallery owner Elaine Miller says, “I went to art school, and this is better because it features the best working professionals alive and provides more information in four days than I got in years of school.”
PleinAir Live is for all skill levels, and previous painting experience is not required. The ticket includes access to replays of the entire event so guests can watch as many times as they’d like.
Registration is now open for PleinAir Live. To find out more and sign up for this global virtual art training opportunity, visit PleinAirLive.com.”
The organizers don’t mention me in the text, which can only be an editorial oversight. I will be presenting a live-on-video online perspective drawing demonstration as part of the event. This will be similar to the perspective speed demos I have been posting on Patreon for the past year, but in real time and with my spoken commentary guiding you through every step of the process. Full disclosure: my demonstration will not literally be plein air, as in drawn outdoors. It will be a simple one-point perspective of an imaginary room. The organizers told me that was fine with them. I will also be responding in real time to questions in streaming chat. Since I am not a touch typist, I will be using my iPad’s voice recognition software.
Boy, I HOPE that works… Maybe I should try a dry run. I’d hate for the results to be as far off the mark as the captioning on news at the airport.
I think I’ll try answering the Proust Questionnaire in voice recognition:
__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Not feeling the need to look at the clock.
__2.__What is your greatest fear?
Incapacity.
__3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I am a terrible listener.
__4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Blind partisanship.
__5.__Which living person do you most admire?
This is boring, but former President Barack Obama.
__6.__What is your greatest extravagance?
I waste a lot of time.
__7.__What is your current state of mind?
Apprehensive about that voice recognition experiment.
__8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Piety.
__9.__On what occasion do you lie?
Only with my mouth is open.
__10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I don’t look enough like my self portraits.
__11.__Which living person do you most despise?
It varies. Rudy Giuliani is up there.
__12.__What is the quality you most like in a man?
Sense of humor.
__13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Same, I think.
__14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
I tend to over use “seemingly”.
__15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life?
I am married to her.
Well, that went better than expected. I WAS speaking very slowly and carefully. I have not edited the foregoing, and the only typo was in my answer to question #9, where I meant to say “only when my mouth is open.”
All in all, an encouraging dry run. I will be posting more about this event in coming weeks.