Artists use talent to teach others at Carnegie Center

By Mark Stalcup Art teacher Timothy Shonk daubs white paint with a paper towel against a black posterboard canvas, teaching students basic lighting and perspective during a class at the Carnegie Heritage and Arts Center in Linton Thursday.

When it comes to sketching out an interest in painting, some people doubt their own ability so much they can't quite see the forest for the trees.

Hence, painting a few of those trees can sometimes help.

Linton's Carnegie Heritage and Arts Center's begun a new series of user-friendly, easygoing evenings where local painters can share their skill and perspective, teaching novices how to paint and develop their own talents.

(By Mark Stalcup) Kyndadee Riggs, 1, focuses intently on her painting during a class at the Carnegie Heritage and Arts Center in Linton Thursday.

The sessions, scheduled intermittently at the Carnegie as volunteers develop their classes, allow more experienced painters the chance to act as teachers. Timothy Shonk, a local lawyer who's been painting for nearly two years, used his easygoing teaching style to convince seven students they, too, can paint.

Wearing a battered, worn fedora and a "Man Eating Chicken" shirt which stemmed from a comic costume he and Fred Markle created for the Freedom Fest parade, Shonk led his class through the steps to create a forest painting.

Simplicity, he suggested, was key. Thus, he used a simple, four-step process to show just how simply art can be created.

(By Mark Stalcup) Kyndadee Riggs, 1, is assisted by her big sister Kalysta, 4, as the pair paint forests during an art instruction class at Linton's Carnegie Heritage and Arts Center Thursday evening.

With only two colors -- black and white -- and utilizing just a foam wedge, a fine-pointed brush and a paper towel, Shonk showed students how to paint using shadow and light.

"First, decide wherever you want the center of attention for your painting to be," Shonk told the class. "It's kind of silly to make the center of your attention in the painting the center of the canvas."

Instead, Shonk suggested students choose to depict a light source directed from a far side of the page, then take the paper towels he provided and blot white paint onto the black poster board each used for a canvas.

(By Mark Stalcup) Kalysta Riggs, 4, is all smiles as she proudly ponders her painting during a Thursday evening art class taught by Timothy Shonk at the Carnegie Heritage and Arts Center.

To show how the light falls across the scene, he suggested students blot the paint heavily closer to where they depict the light coming from, then, as the paint thins on the paper towel, expand outward.

That, he said, creates the illusion of diffused light.

Next, Shonk's students used the pointed edges of the foam wedge, dipped in black paint, to create the trunks of wintry trees, evoking scenes of chilly December nights or eerie October evenings.

(By Mark Stalcup) Jody Fields smiles as she works on her painting at the Carnegie Heritage and Arts Center in Linton. The session, designed to teach students about lighting, is part of an ongoing series of seminars the center hosts to help interested locals learn more about art and creativity and expand their own skills.

"If you kind of fan out at the bottoms of the trees, so it looks like roots, then it'll take care of itself," he explained.

Next, the thin brushes were used, first with black paint, turning the brush slightly as lines were drawn to depict branches.

"You want to start out at the trunk and move away from the tree," he instructed. "That makes the branches thinner as you move outward,turning the brush as you go."

Shonk's a fan of the late painter Bob Ross, whose artistic style and mellow demeanor won over multiple generations.

Ross suggested everyone could paint and depicted simple methods and brush strokes to help viewers attain those goals. Using the same means, Shonk, assisted by Ruby Moon-Houldson, educated a small class, revealing their own abilities.

Moon-Houldson took photographs of the paintings in progress, then posted them to the Carnegie's Facebook site, hoping to stir interest in both the seminars and the site.

Some students doubted they could paint, even amid Shonk's assurances they can.

"It's all about the brush, isn't it?" suggested Barry Miller, who joked he was headed out to buy some Bob Ross signature brushes like Shonk owns and see if his style improved.

However, Shonk, whose painting supplies were typically gifts from his late wife Luann, suggested the way one handles a brush and the amount of paint used are more crucial than a specific, celebrity-sanctioned set of gear.

Over an hour, Shonk showed Miller and his employee Jody Fields how to best utilize their own latent artistic skills.

"It's kind of relaxing," Fields exclaimed.

Shonk concurred.

"There's a lot of therapeutic value in painting," he said.

The simple, easygoing style adapted from Ross even worked for Shonk's two youngest students, Kalysta Riggs, 4, and her sister Kynadee, 1.

"My favorite students," Shonk said.Working with brushes and paints, the pair might've spilled a bit -- and even improvised a kitty cat in the middle of the forest -- but still created a credible painting, exhibiting talent well beyond their years.

"I kind of had to prepare my Mom, and tell her not to give the kids any candy after noon," explained the girls' mother Erica Riggs with a laugh.

Riggs, who works as Shonk's secretary, brought her own mother to the painting class, too, making the evening a multigenerational learning experience.

For his next seminar, Shonk's considering teaching his students how to paint perspectives and three-dimensional studies, allowing them to create detailed paintings with greater depth.