Contemporary Oil Painting Short Course

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.