Course: Beginner's Oil Painting Workshop
Learning how to use oil paint, and how to achieve familiarity with its different techniques.

Click here for the booking form

 
Courses '08

Tutor:
  Hugo Grenville
Assistant Tutor:
  Lisa Freeman
Dates:
  1st - 4th Dec 2008  (4 days)
Start Mon 9.45am finish Thurs 3.30pm
Price:
  £420
Medium:
  Oil
Suitable for:
 

Those who have had some experience of drawing and/or painting in watercolour

The Course:
 

This is the course that dare not speak its name in any British art school today, a nuts and bolts guide to the arcane secrets of painting in oil. Probably the most versatile, robust and mysterious of media, its language is deeply expressive with a powerful physical presence and immense vocabulary that can appear daunting to the beginner. This course sets out to unravel the different technical processes, and to clarify some of the principle ideas behind the medium and materials. Students will be introduced to the characteristics of the different pigments and shown how to handle the paint in a variety of expressive ways including merging areas of wet paint, glazing transparent colours across dry paint, scumbling thick paint across a textured surface, and drawing or scouring into wet paint with wax.

Students will also learn how to prepare different supports, to consider the role of different painting mediums and varnishes, how to select a palette and how to negotiate the key stages of completing a painting in oil from the initial lay-in to the final stages of the work. The changing language of oil paint will be illustrated by slides of the work of the Masters.

   

Please see details of Hugo's other courses:

 

 

 

 

A few of the comments people have made on their feedback forms...

"What I personally took out of the course was the knowledge that I was not alone in my artistic hopes and ideals. I have studied at some very well respected art colleges, one of which has an international reputation, so I do have something to compare against, and on that basis I am of the opinion that Hugo as a tutor is utterly inspirational, a very considered motivator and critic, just great."

"I loved the overall atmosphere of being in an environment where an artist actually works, being immersed, the beautiful surroundings, being taught by someone who you can admire for his work, who enables you to come away, without perfect paintings, but with a new starting point and way of looking at the whole structure of painting"

"Your courses have helped me as a painter in so many ways: in developing skills- I have never heard of sight size drawing or used oils, but especially in boosting my confidence in existing abilities and personal vision."

“This is obviously not a “painting holiday” type of course of which there are now so many being aimed at aspiring painters. This is something beyond that, striving to set the mind on the more fundamental and creative ways of personal expression. Every aspect of the four days was delightful”

"I said at the beginning of the week I seem to have hit a brick wall which I couldn’t get beyond. I’ve knocked it down”

"I found it all most stimulating and as a painter who has struggled to get away from a precise engineering and design discipline I found the short pose, left hand drawing and large brush painting approach exciting and freeing. The teaching was excellent and imparted with the right balance of stick and carrot."

“I sang most of the way home and when not singing had a huge beam of a smile”

"The teaching and advice is drawn from a body of Art History and then is related to what one was actually struggling with on the easel. I think Hugo’s teaching covers a gap that is missing in arts schools today."