Foundation Skills in Oil Painting - Summer Term 2020

Please contact us if you would like to join the wait list for Summer Term.

Summer class are postponed due to COVID-19. Some zoom classes are taking place however!

​The Foundation Skills in Oil Painting courses explore the basics of oil painting: in other words, it covers skills that painters revisit and experiment with their entire careers. You'll learn about topics such as setting up your palette and materials, how to use mediums and grounds, the importance of tone, brushwork, colour mixing and colour relationships, composition and more. You will learn a  few different ways of starting a painting, and see the difference between working quickly in 'wet-on-wet' and building up layers over time. We work from a variety of subject matter and sources of inspiration, looking at a great deal of paintings from art history (up to the present) and painting from still-life, landscape, portraiture and self-portraiture, as well as sometimes working from combined images/mixed media and more abstract compositions in the more experienced groups. Occasionally we meet up at an exhibition in a gallery that might be especially relevant to what we are doing in class, although these visits are totally optional. The courses are carefully planned so that each week builds on the previous, so that by the end of each course you will have gained confidence in working with oil paints. Students who continue for multiple terms deepen their knowledge of painting and experiment with diverse approaches and topics.

Small groups (8 students max) mean a great deal of one-to-one attention. The classes are appropriate for beginners and more experienced painters. Classes take place in supportive and convivial atmosphere. Classes take place at our private studio in Stoke Newington, on Clissold Crescent, just south of Clissold Park. (The studio requires climbing two flights of stairs.)