Martin Wittfooth--Blender From a Painter's POV

Martin Wittfooth

Blender from a Painter's Point of View

• Special guest: TBA
• Tuesdays 2-5pm ET
• 14 Sessions
• Starts September 9 and runs through January*
• 14 students max
• $1,650
• Includes one FREE audit of another mentorship

*The mentorship runs for 14 sessions. SmArt School teachers sometimes have to travel for professional reasons. If they must miss a class they will add a session to the end of the calendar. Some weeks off are also scheduled into the calendar. Scroll to the bottom of the “Courses Listings” page for your semester on the SmArt School website to see all the details  https://www.smarterartschool.com/
ALL CLASSES MEET LIVE Teaching will not happen via email, only during class time.

Class Description
Martin has taught this course for many semesters now and he has seen ways to heighten student experience while also making the class more accessible. The new focus will involve every student working on parallel projects at the same pace of learning, rather than the mentorship approach in which students worked on separate personal projects. This will allow a deep and group-oriented experience in which everyone is learning the material with a simultaneous growth of knowledge and application. By the end of the course each student will be fully ready to open the doors to creating personal projects with the software.

Blender is a powerful, free, open-source 3D creation suite with incredible versatility. This course will explore this software in depth and from a painter’s perspective. Together the class will dive into the immense potential of this tool for visual conceptualization. Students will create figures, objects, spaces, and settings, and also learn how to use and edit pre-made models and 3d scans to aid them in building virtual dioramas. These methods can serve the artist as dynamic reference imagery to paint from, as standalone digital artwork, as characters to animate, or as the source material for 3D-printed sculptures or miniatures, etc. The versatility of application of this knowledge is vast, and only limited by the artist’s imagination.

The course is designed to benefit both artists who work in traditional media and artists already working digitally. Artists working in traditional media (such as painters and sculptors) will benefit from learning this new way of creating personalized and limitlessly customizable reference imagery. For these artists Blender can become a highly versatile 21st century update to the classical tradition of sculpting maquettes and dioramas in the studio. For artists already working digitally, the class will provide a new approach to digital tools by emphasizing the way painters think about visual art, and how one might incorporate 3D perspectives and the potential this unlocks to their toolset. Artists with an interest in 3d character-creation will be at home here, as well.

At the start of this workshop we will place emphasis on helping each student become adept at and comfortable with sculpting. Students will learn how to block out (or "sketch") the general form and shapes of the subject. From this base model they will advance toward high detail and texture. The end result can be as stylized or realistic as they wish to make it. The students will also become familiar with and experienced with painting and texturing their models. This will include understanding materials, brushes, textures, and color. There are a great variety of techniques we can use to give our models the character we want--it is limited only by the imagination. Later in the workshop students will learn the program Substance Painter. Substance Painter is an industry-standard 3d-painting and texturing program that is used by the majority of film and video game studios. With this tool an artist can add highly dynamic and realistic effects to models and environments. This program works fluently alongside 3d creation suites such as Blender, and this course will show artists how to harmonize the workflow between them. Substance Painter offers a free trial so that students can partake in learning without the need to commit to a paid license.

We will also cover 3D scanning: a method that allows us to capture objects, figures, architecture, and settings with any camera--even a standard phone camera works great for this. Once captured as a 3D model, we can bring any object into Blender and use it as an asset in our scenes. We can also edit it to our hearts' content. This method of reference-gathering has massive implications. This practice is a rapidly developing field as is the world of 3D software in general.

In this workshop we will also discuss how using this software will prepare the student for 3D printing their imagery. This is another area of creative potential that is becoming much more accessible to artists than ever before.

Approaching a new program can be daunting, but in this workshop all levels of experience are welcomed. In fact, if you’ve never opened a 3D art program before, you’ll fit in perfectly here. Martin will guide the class in a discussion that starts with the fundamentals of the program and ends with each student being able to create their own 3D environment. Unlike a tutorial these classes will be highly interactive. Martin will ensure that every student understands the concepts of the program and learns how to apply them.

The material requirements for this workshop are a computer capable of smoothly running the latest version of Blender* and a 3-button mouse. A drawing tablet/stylus is also mandatory, as digital sculpting and painting benefit greatly from pen pressure control. A tablet does not need to be high-end and expensive to achieve satisfactory results in this course.

Each class will be recorded to provide each participant with access to previously-covered information as they work through their weekly assignments.
*There is a great deal of information online about minimum and recommended system requirements. This app may be useful in scanning your system to see how it would fare in running the program:

www.pcgamebenchmark.com/detect/blender

Towards the end of the class a special guest will visit the class.
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After taking this class students will also receive the option of a free profile on the Alumni Portfolios page.

ABOUT MARTIN WITTFOOTH

​Martin Wittfooth was born in Toronto, Canada in 1981 and currently splits his time between studios in Savannah, Georgia, and the Kingston, New York. He earned his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2008. Wittfooth’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Akron Art Museum in Ohio, and La Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris, with solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Montreal. His paintings have also appeared in numerous publications, including Juxtapoz, The New York Times Art Review, and Vice, and cover features in New American Paintings, Hi-Fructose and American Artist Magazine.