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Exploring Inner Wilderness (Online Course) Winter 2026 w/ Angel Ramos
March 1 to March 29 (Sundays), 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM, Eastern Time
**All sessions are live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. All recordings will be available to students for 3 months after the final session, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.
Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite. Our business hours are 10:00 AM through 5:00 PM. All course information and email correspondence will be sent during business hours. If students purchase a course, workshop, demo or recording outside business hours or during the weekend the course information or recording will be sent the following business day.
Course Description
In this course, we will explore what is within us and see what we can do about letting it out. Our freedom as artists is that we get to play. Playing is essentially our job, and I believe it is a very serious job. We might even do such a good job playing and wondering that it reminds others how important it is to keep it alive in their own lives. So we’re going to take it very slow in the process of gathering our inspirations and our references and learning to break it down so that we might see what it is that inspires us in particular. Not only might we have a chance to know ourselves better and what excites us or scares us, but we can nurture our creative practice and let it become a more intimate, vulnerable process. The goal is not to only work in this way, but to see what happens and what is available to us when we do slow down and treat each step of the process with the same attention and reverence that we tend to reserve only for the finished piece. So we will be gathering inspiration and references. We will be taking thorough notes on our inner thoughts, and we will be mixing it all together in a way that conjures up new imagery that could only have come from us. It might not be amazing or beautiful; it might not be what we expect, but if we can continue to surprise ourselves, that is wonderful.
Course Outline
Week 1: Introductions. We will go over the goals of the class, and speak about the importance of fostering an intimate relationship with our creative practice. There will be a demo on automatic drawing.
Homework: Gather references and inspirations. Include something that you disliked.
Week 2: Lessons on Visual tools such as shape hierarchy, color, value, tension and release.
We will talk about how different tools can help us in achieving different visual narratives and how familiarity with these common visual tools and tropes can help us understand what we are drawn to.
Homework: Alchemize your own visual motifs from gathered reference and inspirations.
Week 3: Lesson on synthesis, gathering what we’ve alchemized from our references and inspirations and playing until we find the image we want to make.
Homework: Synthesize, create a finished piece.
Week 4: Critique Session. We will discuss our work and our process. We will also look at how we can tune the process to fit us more personally.
Homework: Another chance to do it all again, we create one final piece, following this same process, this time on our own.
Week 5: Final Critique.
Course Materials List
Students may work in any medium they feel most fluent in—digital, acrylic, oil, watercolor, or mixed. The instructor will demonstrate digitally. Bring your preferred materials and any note-taking tools.
I will be working mostly digitally for the sake of accessibility and demonstration. If you have any questions about a medium you’d like to work with, feel free to ask me. I am experienced with oil painting, gouache, watercolor, ink, pencil, charcoal, and digital.
The key is for you to use materials you are ideally comfortable and familiar with, to help you along in your creativity.
March 1 to March 29 (Sundays), 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM, Eastern Time
**All sessions are live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. All recordings will be available to students for 3 months after the final session, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.
Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite. Our business hours are 10:00 AM through 5:00 PM. All course information and email correspondence will be sent during business hours. If students purchase a course, workshop, demo or recording outside business hours or during the weekend the course information or recording will be sent the following business day.
Course Description
In this course, we will explore what is within us and see what we can do about letting it out. Our freedom as artists is that we get to play. Playing is essentially our job, and I believe it is a very serious job. We might even do such a good job playing and wondering that it reminds others how important it is to keep it alive in their own lives. So we’re going to take it very slow in the process of gathering our inspirations and our references and learning to break it down so that we might see what it is that inspires us in particular. Not only might we have a chance to know ourselves better and what excites us or scares us, but we can nurture our creative practice and let it become a more intimate, vulnerable process. The goal is not to only work in this way, but to see what happens and what is available to us when we do slow down and treat each step of the process with the same attention and reverence that we tend to reserve only for the finished piece. So we will be gathering inspiration and references. We will be taking thorough notes on our inner thoughts, and we will be mixing it all together in a way that conjures up new imagery that could only have come from us. It might not be amazing or beautiful; it might not be what we expect, but if we can continue to surprise ourselves, that is wonderful.
Course Outline
Week 1: Introductions. We will go over the goals of the class, and speak about the importance of fostering an intimate relationship with our creative practice. There will be a demo on automatic drawing.
Homework: Gather references and inspirations. Include something that you disliked.
Week 2: Lessons on Visual tools such as shape hierarchy, color, value, tension and release.
We will talk about how different tools can help us in achieving different visual narratives and how familiarity with these common visual tools and tropes can help us understand what we are drawn to.
Homework: Alchemize your own visual motifs from gathered reference and inspirations.
Week 3: Lesson on synthesis, gathering what we’ve alchemized from our references and inspirations and playing until we find the image we want to make.
Homework: Synthesize, create a finished piece.
Week 4: Critique Session. We will discuss our work and our process. We will also look at how we can tune the process to fit us more personally.
Homework: Another chance to do it all again, we create one final piece, following this same process, this time on our own.
Week 5: Final Critique.
Course Materials List
Students may work in any medium they feel most fluent in—digital, acrylic, oil, watercolor, or mixed. The instructor will demonstrate digitally. Bring your preferred materials and any note-taking tools.
I will be working mostly digitally for the sake of accessibility and demonstration. If you have any questions about a medium you’d like to work with, feel free to ask me. I am experienced with oil painting, gouache, watercolor, ink, pencil, charcoal, and digital.
The key is for you to use materials you are ideally comfortable and familiar with, to help you along in your creativity.