Course details
Join artist Martha Holmes for this two part course on oils following her sell out show at The New Craftsman Gallery, St Ives, Between Land and Sea.
Inspired by the Cornish masters and contemporary painters with a strong resonance with St Ives – Patrick Heron, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, William Scott and Lucie Bray; Martha will take you through how this has led her own development as a painter sharing with you some key techniques you can use for yourself. Start with exploring how to understand the landscape through colour. The emphasis will be on the importance of ‘looking’ within the landscape, and how that allows us to form a deep connection with our subject matter as painters.
Working from a video recording of the local coastline, learn to break down the landscape to form a colour palette of that location, leading to a number of small oil colour studies on paper by the end of the first session. In the next session scale up and widen your palette. Learn how to harness large flat areas of colour to create a sense of abstraction and how to translate your own experience into colour and expressive mark making.
Session 1
Martha will show you how to create her colour palette and work on a series of small studies.
Session 2
Explore shape and form, moving from focused colour studies to working on a larger scale.




Who is this course for?
Anyone with an interest in art and design and the work of St Ives artists. Ideal for beginners and intermediate painters looking for ways to freshen up their painting and move more into abstraction. A great way to build your confidence in creating an evocative but simplified colour palette.
What will I learn?
A deeper understanding about the visual structure of landscape and how this can be translated on to surface through paint.
How to upscale from smaller studies.
How to create shape and form through colour.
What you need
We will be working with oils on oil paper so you will need a selection of oil paints and brushes as well as sheets of oil paper or cardboard or mdf board primed with thinned wood primer.
Once you have booked you will be able to watch on demand immediately.
You can pause, rewind and watch again as often as you like until the session expires 90 days after purchase
You can watch this on a PC, laptop or tablet and if you have chromecast or miracast you could even cast to your SmartTV from your phone.
You will also be invited to join our Facebook Alumni group so you can share your discoveries with our community of fellow students from around the world.
Taught by
What our students say
Martha covered so much, but in a straightforward and accessible way, with loads of helpful detail about techniques and materials. This was my first experience of St Ives School of Painting, but I definitely will be back for more.
Martha Holmes is wonderful about demystifying painting and giving confidence to the student.
I had no idea what to expect but was so impressed by the format, filming and Martha’s explanations.
