Scratching Technique: Floral Bouquet

This exciting, new course invites you into a technique born from Olya Losina’s immersive Art Theater experience, an innovative fusion of performance and visual art that brought audiences to the edge of their seats.

At Olya's former art center in San Diego, California, Olya staged six unforgettable painting performances in a transformed studio-turned-amphitheater. Each night featured a different floral arrangement set in a distinct visual style—from dazzling color explosions and romantic elegance to baroque opulence and minimalist white-on-white. Accompanied by music chosen to match each atmosphere (Italian opera, French chanson, American jazz), artists created live, oversized paintings in front of a live audience.

In this course, you’ll get to experience one of the signature techniques from those Art Theater nights: a dynamic combination of painting and drawing. Working from observation, you’ll begin by blocking in the floral arrangement with latex house paint and a large flat brush. Then, while the paint is still wet, you’ll use a skewer, palette knife, or similar tool to draw into the paint, scratching expressive lines that define the bouquet with a loose, energetic, sketch-like quality.

This process is fast-paced and freeing. You’ll work across multiple canvases from the same arrangement to sharpen your eye, build confidence, and develop rhythm. You’ll be encouraged to experiment with canvas size, controlling the intensity and speed of your strokes - learning to loosen up, trust your hand, and develop a bold, gestural approach.

What you will learn:

• How to shift to the Right Brain mode and get into the flow through intuitive painting and drawing 
• How to work with color in a different way 
• How to silence your internal controller
• Explore a speedy way of painting a large artwork
• Experience complete creative freedom and liberate your spirit from the constraints of self-criticism
• Confront your perfectionism
• Discover your authentic style, while working rapidly

This is a mind-expanding technique for anyone curious about how to combine painting and drawing.