Italy Painting Tour of Florence and Tuscan Hill Towns

We are proud to announce a special tour to Italy, led by artistic instructor Kathleen Jacobs.

This departure is limited to a maximum of twelve participants. While the emphasis is an artistic workshop, this is also a cultural journey, which we believe will enhance your ability to capture the essence of Tuscany in your work. Your guides will take you to locations you could not access on your own, including monasteries, churches, and vineyards. In Florence, there will be quiet, morning walks,...

We are proud to announce a special tour to Italy, led by artistic instructor Kathleen Jacobs.

This departure is limited to a maximum of twelve participants. While the emphasis is an artistic workshop, this is also a cultural journey, which we believe will enhance your ability to capture the essence of Tuscany in your work. Your guides will take you to locations you could not access on your own, including monasteries, churches, and vineyards. In Florence, there will be quiet, morning walks, to locations such as the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi Corridor, and the Duomo.  You can also immerse yourselves in the extraordinary art in the Uffizi and Academia Museums.

In this workshop students will paint in the open air of the beautiful Tuscan landscape. Each day we will look as Corot did, to interpret the soft color-palette of Italy. The hazy landscape paintings and poetic scenes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot helped define plein air painting today. Like Corot we will seek to see and express the dreamlike quality of the color and light of Italy while staying true to our “first impressio” to capture the quiet dignity of the natural world.

We always welcome tour companions who are not artists. There are interesting aspects of Italian life waiting to be explored in every location. In Florence, the countless museums, churches, markets, restaurants, and stores within walking distance of the hotel, make the city a desirable destination for any traveler. The quaint Tuscan villages offer wonderful landscapes, local markets, piazzas, and small shops to be enjoyed by all who might like to sketch, write, or simply appreciate the culture of Italy. The trip’s leisurely pace will provide ample opportunity to wander through medieval hill towns, and feast on the renowned regional foods and wines.

The accommodations that have been chosen combine simple elegance with excellent location. In Florence, you will stay at a small, family-run hotel, centrally located in a quiet neighborhood. In the Tuscan countryside, you will stay at a restored country villa, surrounded by a vineyard. It provides an absolutely perfect location for country walks and day trips to Tuscan hill towns and villages. You will have a light breakfast before departing for the day and return to a traditional Tuscan meal in the evening.

Kathleen Jacobs and About this Class

 In this class students will start with intuitive sketches of the natural hills, trees and foliage of the Italian landscape. Students look carefully to make pencil compositional studies to settle into the view of such a special place. Working in any painting medium, students will make small intimate paintings in

one sitting. Like Corot, students will look to investigate composition, using form, shape, line, and color while working in nature. Emphasis will be placed on capturing the feeling of the landscape, without over analysis. We will use the historic color paint palette of Corot to express emotion.

Kathleen Jacobs will provide individualized instruction during plein air excursions, demonstrations, discussions, and presentations that will provide the format for an intensive exciting learning experience. Working small, participants will work to create work with a spirit of place. Her teaching emphasizes looking at the landscape and to understand the formal elements of painting, shape, color, space, form while responding to the grace, order and beauty that is in front of you. There will be ample opportunity to discuss each other’s work and to discuss other international painters throughout history to enrich our experience in Italy.