Instructor: Mike Wise
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Biography: Michael Wise was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. While he grew up in an urban environment, Mike gravitated to the outdoors, camping in the Adirondacks and scuba diving along the New England coastline. He spent endless hours as a kid sketching the various objects from nature he collected on his adventures. His passion for wildlife led him to study zoology at the University of Montana. He combined his degree in science with studies in illustration and painting, earning a B.S. in Biological / PreMedical Illustration at Iowa State University. His career path took a drastic turn after a rock-climbing injury led him to seek treatment with a chiropractic. This experience had a profound impact on him, and he enrolled Northwestern Health Science University earing a Doctor of Chiropractic degree in 1995. In recent years he returned to his art, spending much of his spare time plein air painting around Central Oregon. He has been the president of Plein Air Paintings of Oregon and has taught landscape painting classes for the DYI Cave and Sagebrushers in Bend, Oregon. As a painter his interests lie in creating lush landscapes, draped in dramatic light. He uses sculptural passages of paint to create blocks of paint that take on the shapes of rocks, trees and clouds. His work leans towards representational impressionism placed upon abstracted backgrounds. The end result is a painting that is alive, rich in color and flowing with movement. His goal is to have the viewer experience the sensation of stepping into the scene themselves. He currently shows his paintings at Hood Avenue Gallery in Sisters, Oregon |
Classes by this instructor
Oil Painting: Animal Portraits
This four part oil painting workshop that will expose you to the traditional method of establishing value, and exploring color, as well as to look for in your subject that will breathe an extra bit of life into the portrait. Students will work in an alla prima style of oil painting. Alla prima is a direct painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint The process will be streamlined to expertly capture and maintain the strongest impression of the subject as possible, in the fastest time possible. Each class will begin with a short demo followed by hands-on painting by students. Students will bring their own images of the portraits that they'd like to paint.
April 3-24, 2025 | 5:00pm-7:00pm | Bend
Oil Painting: FLOW, Foundational Principles of Painting Water
Water is the driving force of all nature. It is majestic, beautiful, and ever-changing, moving from tranquil pools, to wildly turbulent rivulets, to rolling waves and cascading waterfalls. These varying scenarios make water a particularly challenging subject to paint. In this four part workshop we will explore the fundamentals skills needed capturing water in the landscape. We will take an in-depth dive into how to determine the appropriate color mixes for water, how to capture reflections and how to create representative turbulence of fast-moving water.
March 6-27, 2025 | 5:00pm-7:00pm | Bend
Oil Painting: Let It Snow, Painting the Winter Wonderland
Capturing a light-filled snow scene begins with understanding how light moves across the winter landscape. This four part workshop will introduce students to the basic skills necessary to paint a snow filled landscape. Participates will learn how to mix warm and cool colors to capture the expressive and luminous quality of snow.
January 23, 2025 to February 27, 2025 | 5:00pm-7:00pm | Bend