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Saturday, August 4, 2012

My Imaginism In-House Workshop Experience

Hello everyone!

I just came back from the amazing experience of the Imaginism In-House Workshop. I finally got some free time to write a bit about it and show what I was up to.

I still can't believe I got chosen to be part of the Imaginism Workshop family. It is such a great honor and a really unique experience. First day, I was the first to arrive to Toronto Airport, where master artist, Thierry Lafontaine, picked me up and took me to the Imaginism Workshop House. After getting my stuff a bit settled where I would be sleeping for the month, we went back to the airport to pick up one of my fellow peers, June Shieh (from LA). While we waited for the other two apprentices, we accompanied Thierry to buy a foosball table, which I found it a pretty fun and weird way of starting this workshop. And let me tell ya, that foosball table got used and played a lot during the duration of the workshop.

Thierry also taught us so many awesome tricks and plays, while relating it to our painting lessons, visualizing our goals and life itself.
Later that day, the third apprentice, Ryan Van Eyk (from Johannesburg, South Africa) arrived to the Workshop house and finally, Sergio Tomo (from Sao Paulo, Brazil) arrived the next day.

When Thierry first took me to the Workshop House, I was blown away. Just being inside, with all those walls full of the amazing paintings from Thierry, Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera I got inspired right away.

Pictures of  what would be my bedroom for the month, the staircase and the creative/learning area.

The workshop was what I was waiting for a long time and much more than that. I was looking for a way to keep studying, improve my painting skills, and more importantly, I've been looking for a physical place to work on those things where me and other artists would inspire each other in a stimulating and creative environment. This was exactly what I've been looking for.

All of us would normally be working till late, but pushing each other and getting creative.

Not only I got to improve my skills significantly, but I also got to meet great people and some of my idol artists which I always look up to for inspiration in art and their philosophies.

From left to right: June Shie, Ryan Van Eyk, Bobby Chiu, Kei Acedera, me, Peter Chan, Thierry Lafontaine and Sergio Tomo.

The first day, we had a lecture with Bobby to start the Workshop. He gave us as a small gift his book "The Perfect Bait" autographed by him. By the way, I really recommend you to get this book, since it talks about how to become a successful artist by doing what really is a passion to you and becoming your own brand.  But as I was reading it, I realized it can be applied not to only artists, but to any kind of professional out there. Because it talks about how to get over the million reasons to give up your pursuit of whatever your passion is, motivate yourself and take all those bad things to bury them and build up above, overcoming them and succeeding.

On that first day, he shared some of his life experiences in the industry, how he came about, and what he did to overcome some of the bad things life threw at him. He also got us really motivated and pumped up, which was a perfect start to this workshop. He also did a small motivational exercise at the end of the lecture. It was such an intense feeling what he made me feel from his words and what he helped us envision what could be part of our future. I literally cried from that intense feeling, because it felt so real, I could grasp it right then and there and realized that I can achieve whatever I draw as my path. It blew my mind away. There is a video by Bobby that talks a bit about this things and a similar exercise to the one at the workshop here. Check it out.

After that day, we started the drawing lectures with Thierry. That first week was about the very basics of drawing and art being a form of comunication. Also the fact of really understanding something before drawing or writing about it. We drew from lines, to squares, to boxes. I didn't realize how hard it really is to do that, trying to maintain the same spacing between each other and drawing perfect squares by hand. And realizing that everything is based of a line, square and ultimately a box and how everything we see can be based off a box. Also mind blowing. That first week was all about getting a really solid ground to build up and improve, to later applying this techniques when creating new art.

Here are some of the exercises and paintings I did at the Workshop:




You can view three of the other paintings I did at the Workshop here.

I had an amazing experience there. I got all boosted up to keep at my craft and keep pursuing my goals as a professional artist. Little by little I'll be posting more and more often with new creations and hopefully get really god at it for what I want to do.

Here's a blog post about the Workshop I attended and other interesting things by Imaginism here

I hope this post inspires you to keep at your craft and pursue your passion. If you wanna ask anything about the workshop or anything in general, don't hesitate to contact me. :)

Thanks for reading!