MasterDemos
If you're a student you can get 30% off with code STUDENTARTIST and your school email.
Learn Melissa's approach to still life as visual poetry and meaningful expression
Meet Melissa and Daud and get inspired to create your own still life poetry
This comprehensive 20-lesson workshop captures the authentic creative process as Melissa demonstrates her complete approach to meaningful still life painting in pastel. Watch her navigate real challenges including unexpected lighting changes and paper difficulties while maintaining her philosophical approach to art as "storage of meaning."
Learn Melissa's intuitive "hot and cold" method for creating meaningful object relationships and compositions that transcend mere arrangement.
Melissa shares her hope that students will find their own artistic voice while exploring how still life can express humanity, communicate meaning, and create visual poetry through the genre she's grown to love.
Melissa demonstrates her intuitive "hot and cold" game for composing meaningful still lifes, starting with one beloved object and building relationships.
Explore the tools at your disposal: story, shape, edges, and point of view to create compositions that resonate with meaning.
Melissa reveals her personal collection of treasured objects including porcelain rabbits, Moroccan textiles, and beloved lemons, sharing the stories and emotional connections that make these items worthy actors in her visual narratives.
Master the whisper-light drawing technique and color "naming" process that preserves paper tooth while building dramatic value structures.
Begin the initial drawing with feather-light touch, using color-specific sketching to preserve precious paper tooth.
Master the art of triangulation to achieve accurate proportions while maintaining the flexibility to adjust as you work.
Learn Melissa's unique approach to "naming" each color area with initial strokes, creating a blueprint for the painting.
Build dramatic contrast by developing the darkest values first, using Melissa's weaving technique for rich color.
Discover how to weave colors together to make surfaces sing with life, from vibrant highlights to the unique challenges of painting yellow.
Add vibrant color to the dramatic shapes, learning to build intensity through multiple color layers.
Continue building color relationships, discovering how to make even "gravel" surfaces sing with life.
Master the complexity of painting lemons, learning to find the right shadows and midtones for convincing yellow forms.
Develop the background not as passive space but as an active participant in the visual story.
Capture luminous whites, metallic reflections, and complex surfaces using temperature shifts and Melissa's spiral development method.
Paint the reflective rabbit, learning to capture both warm and cool reflections on white surfaces.
Understand Melissa's spiral approach to completion, bringing up each area "one click" at a time.
Tackle the samovar's complex reflections, using color temperature shifts to show form.
Add highlights and bright passages while maintaining overall harmony and avoiding "brightness competitions."
Navigate the "75% crisis" through to completion, learning when your emotional intention is achieved and when a painting truly captures meaning.
Continue watching Melissa refine relationships between objects in this contemplative painting segment, ensuring each element supports the whole composition through careful adjustments.
Return to the challenging lemons with fresh eyes, building their full dimensional presence.
Learn to push through the inevitable doubt phase using Melissa's list-making technique and trust in process.
Master the ribbons' lustrous surfaces, creating convincing folds and reflections in burgundy silk.
Make crucial final adjustments to color relationships, edges, and values throughout the painting.
Melissa concludes the demonstration at "a good stopping place," discussing plans for post-demo refinements and encouraging students to embrace challenges with new materials.
Melissa presents her top ten insights for creating meaningful still life paintings, including forming emotional relationships with objects, using spacing to show emotion, why light is drama, challenging yourself beyond current skills, when to know a painting is done, and how titles can add layers of meaning.
Comprehensive workbook with key insights and exercises from Melissa's course
This comprehensive workbook accompanies Melissa's course, providing key insights from each lesson and exercises to reinforce the concepts of painting still life as visual poetry. Perfect for tracking your progress and revisiting important techniques.
Melissa Hefferlin brings 30+ years of classical training and deep philosophical insight to her still life practice. Her unique approach treats objects as actors with souls, creating "thin places" where the material and spiritual worlds meet. Through her patient, spiraling method and distinctive color-weaving technique, students learn to trust their intuition while building sophisticated technical skills in pastel.
