Contemporary Oil Painting Short Course
Course description
Course overview
This course explores how you can produce oil paintings that are both creative and technically sound by drawing inspiration from different visual sources. You will use photographs, magazine imagery, objects and memories as a starting point, and combine them through drawing, photocopying and collage.
Group discussions and personal advice will help you achieve an imaginative and arresting painting by the end of the course. Please bring in any sketches or photographs that you would like to add to the visual sources provided by the tutor.
Who this course is for
This course is suitable for anyone interested in contemporary oil painting, regardless of prior experience. Students do not need to have used oil paint before, but some previous experience in drawing will be helpful.
Key information
Topics covered
- Stretch and prepare canvas
- Explore basic colour mixing and ways in which oil paint can be applied
- Combine your sources through layers of images or build up different textures in different parts of the painting
- Explore the transparent, translucent and opaque qualities of oil painting through your final painting
Learning outcomes
- Get a practical introduction to the technical aspect of oil painting
- Digital badge and certificate of attendance
Materials
- Sketchbooks or sheets of paper
- Pencils
- Rubbers
- Pencil sharpeners
- Piece(s) of hardboard, MDF or canvas board the size(s) you want to work with
- Stretchers and canvas (cotton duck) that we will stretch and prepare in class (optional)
- Palette
- Two old jam jars
- Brushes
- Kitchen towel or old rags to clean your brushes and palette
- Palette knife to mix the paint and/or to apply paint
- A range of colours (oil paint), for instance:
- Titanium white
- Cadmium red
- Alizarin crimson
- Ultramarine blue
- Cobalt blue
- Cadmium yellow
- Lemon yellow
For Health and Safety reasons students are not allowed to bring any solvents to the studio. We will provide low-odour mineral spirits.
Any kind of spray products, turpentine or white spirits are banned from the building and the internal courtyard.
Additional helpful colours are:
- Viridian green
- Cerulean blue
- Yellow ochre
- Burnt sienna
- Raw sienna
- Raw umber
- Burnt umber
Source Materials:
- Sketches
- Photographs, magazine cuttings and any other material that you might want to work from
These are just recommendations, so if you have done oil painting before bringing in whatever you want to use.
Tutor
David Price
David Price studied at Edinburgh School of Art, the University of Newcastle and The Royal College of Art. He is a practicing artist who in 2009 was selected for New Contemporaries. David has a PGCE teaching certificate and over 15 years of experience teaching drawing and fine art.
Sarah Sparkes
Sarah Sparkes is an artist and independent curator whose practice explores the immaterial and how this may be visualised. Since 2008 she has run the curatorial research project GHost. She has organised numerous collaborative and solo projects, working with both U.K. and international artists and realising ambitious events and exhibitions in both public and private spaces - including the London Art Fair and Folkestone Triennial. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts and between 2009 - 2011 was a Research Fellow at the University of London. As well as leading and curating a number of visual arts projects, she frequently exhibits her own work which encompasses installation, painting, performance and film. She was the 2015 the winner of the MERU Art*Science Award, recently had a solo exhibition with New Art Projects. A qualified HE Lecturer, she has taught within both academic and non-academic environments and is currently lecturing in Fine Art and Independent Curating at a number of London institutions including Tate Modern and University of the Arts. She lectures and has published widely on her own practice and curatorial projects.
Take a look at Sarah's websiteBook a course
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