This film is great for anyone interested in drawing, whether you want to improve your painting skills or just enjoy knocking out a quick sketch.

Craig Nelson, CAC will show you how to block in preliminary shapes, achieve proper placement and proportion, and how to pick out and render elements for a convincing three-dimensional scene. You learn how to sequence your drawing for the best chance of success, where to look for the brightest lights, anticipate soft and hard edges, and how to take advantage of reflected light and bounced color. Craig discusses and demonstrates the importance of using a variety of lines to make a drawing more interesting and contribute to the artistic qualities of the overall drawing.

In the last newsletter we announced that the new Craig Nelson Oil Portrait DVD Workshop would be here in about 2 weeks. We had a technical glitch and have had to resend it to the duplicator. We appologize. We're now about 3 weeks out. But, you can still get the $5 OFF, PRE-ORDER SPECIAL PRICE UNTIL DVD'S ARRIVE in the warehouse.

ON LINE ART SHOW – Floral Paintings – Jan Kunz, Juror, a Creative Catalyst instructor, will select the top three entries and explain WHY THEY WERE CHOSEN OVER OTHERS. Along with the critique, the First Place winner will receive a Creative Catalyst VHS or DVD of their choosing. Second Place receives a $20 gift certificate and third place a $10 gift certificate.

Deadline 8/31/05

This week we are filming artist Robbie Laird. Watch for her film in 3-4 months. You can also add your name to the newsletter notification list.

Go to the CCPvideos.com Home Page and select "get our Newsletter" signup.

New list of Creative Catalyst workshop schedules.

Creative Catalyst supports the arts. One way is through our donations to art organizations to support art exhibitions and other fund-raising efforts.

We also provide web space to these organizations to help get the word out on their activities.

See the growing list of winners of art exhibitions from all over the world. If you are in an art group we'd like to add your winners to our site.

Check out our list of art organizations. PLease Email us any update information you may have.

We are adding 2 minute (approx) previews to most of our dvd and video workshops to the web site. You will find them soon near the bottom of each workshop page.

From our Home page select "Product List" or "Titles". Look at the bottom of the title page and see if there is a "Movie" logo. Click on the link and it should play.

Everyone here is working hard to get our workshops finished and out to you. Here is my best guess on when they will be in stock:

AUGUST 8/25 - Chee 1&2 in VHS

SEPTEMBER --Chee Vol.4:Improvisational Splash Color Technique --Chee 3 in VHS --Sean Dye: Waterbase Oils --Carrie Burns Brown: Collage -- Craig Nelson Oil Portrait DVD

OCTOBER --Chee Vol. 5: Crinkling Technique with Oriental Paper --Martha Saudek: Oil --Carl Dalio: Watercolor --Taylor Ikin - Watercolor on YUPO

NOVEMBER --Chee Vol. 6: Marblizing & Monoprinting Plus Painting techniques: --Lesley Riley: Fabric & Collage Art

DECEMBER: --Robbie Laird: Watercolor

JANUARY: --Ted Nuttall: Watercolor

FEBRUARY: -- Sharilyn Miller: Shrink Plastic Bead making and jewelry

MARCH: --Dayle Doroshow: mixed media/ polymer clay

APRIL: -- Caroline Jasper: Oil/Mixed-media

Thank you for the dozens of suggestions of artist/instructors you have submitted so far.

It will be helpful for us to see any additional comments you may have regarding new ecommendations, or additional comments about any already listed in the forum.

You can post "replies" to any posts in the forum. That way everyone can be part of the conversation and process.

The list is growing daily. (I am a little behind as we are filming Robbie Laird this week). We hope to start our consideration process by the end of the month.

Thanks for all your help.

This film is fourth in the Cheng-Khee Chee series, but stands alone as a complete lesson. In it you learn exactly how Chee uses his Splash Color Technique to most effortlessly paint dramatic landscape scenes. Chee demonstrates how to create a surface that gives you rich texture and artistic flexibility. He shows the benefits of risk taking that will add excitement and interest to your paintings. You see the simplicity of his drawing, his energetic brushwork and his decisive design. He discusses “left brain” emotion while vigorously applying paint, tipping and turning the board to create an exciting, rich surface. Chee then puts to work his rational mind and applies his design principles and thorough knowledge of his subject to create a dynamic painting rich in movement, depth, texture and drama.

$5 OFF, PRE-ORDER SPECIAL PRICE UNTIL DVD'S ARRIVE HERE (expected in 3-4 weeks).

Learn to combine materials to create vibrant art with mixed-media artist Sean Dye. In this workshop you will learn how to layer materials in order to achieve the versatility of mixed-media without sacrificing long-term survivability. Sean shows you the tools & techniques for combining charcoal, India ink, acrylic gouache and water-soluble oils on the same canvas. For Sean, each layer defines a different aspect of his process: vine charcoal to define shapes; India ink to plot values; acrylic gouache to create a foil for the colors he places using the final layer of water-soluble oil. His final layer of palette knife water soluble oils establishes color and texture. Along the way he provides pointers on the use of each material, what to look for when purchasing paint and a few safety tips. Sean works from an oil pastel reference painting.

PRE-ORDER SPECIAL PRICE $34.95 UNTIL DVDs ARRIVE IN WAREHOUSE!

The special low price for the series is a limited time offer. Once all DVDs in the series are released the series price will increase. Thanks to all of you who are ordering the series as this helps us cover some of the costs of production.

Without YOU, there is no Creative Catalyst.

What would you like to see in our newsletters and/or website?

How can we make it easier to navigate through our website?

-What would you like to learn or hear about in our newsletter?

Thanks, Lynn, Jim & Benjamin

Contact Us

Many of you have asked us to carry our artist/instructor's books. We are adding these to our web site and offering them at $5 off the list price with any video/dvd workshop purchase.

Recommend other books you'd like to see

Some have asked why we discourage distributing our video & DVD workshops to art libraries and why we prohibit their use as rentals. We think it is important to give you our viewpoint on this matter and to ask for your views, as well.

One of our missions is to help the Artist/Instructors who film with us make a living as an artist.

If you're an artist you know how difficult it is to make a decent living as an artist. Everyone wants us to give our art away for donations. Many think we should paint just for the joy of it, without consideration to our incomes. Few understand the cost overhead of materials, matting, framing and gallery fees. The net to the artist is pretty slim.

We created our contract with artists with this in mind so that they receive income off of every tape or DVD we sell, anywhere in the world.

After much soul-searching we have decided that rentals and libraries are a "Win-Lose". They are a wonderful idea for renters and borrowers, but they take away income from our artists and reduce our capacity to keep our doors open.

We'd like to hear from you about this. jim@ccpvideos.com

If you are unsatisfied with any purchase from our website, for any reason, just return it within 10 days and we will refund 100% of your purchase price (not including s&h). We will always replace any defective Creative Catalyst Video or DVD free of charge, no matter where you purchased it. - Jim & Lynn Powers -