Learn to use diverse techniques and innovative painting exercises to explore your own personal approach to landscape painting today. We will look at a range of contemporary landscape painters and how they use paint to explore their individuality within this genre.
Prior to the three-day course at St Ives School of Painting, you will receive a list of questions to think about from your tutor, contemporary landscape painter Kerry Harding. These will help you think about, discover or hone your personal approach within a very popular genre of such unlimiting possibilities.
Questions such as Which landscapes do you draw comfort from? Which landscapes bring about a sense of awe, or unease? Are you interested in the pictorial or the political? There are no right or wrong answers but they will help determine the images and sketches you collect around St Ives to use as starting points throughout the course. The techniques and processes you explore will encourage you to be open to invention and new pivots away from constrictive expectations. Kerry will guide you through this way of working with the focus on bringing out your personal approach.
After a brief stint drawing in the landscape around the school in response to your individual considerations, the course will develop in the studio through structured exercises then focus on developing your own work individually under Kerry’s guidance.
nb: This course involves working in oils. We use low odour white spirit and keep the studio well ventilated. However if you have a sensitivity to solvents and oil based products the course might not be suitable.
Through structured exercises learn to use visual clues from your response to the preparatory questions. Explore how composition, scale, texture, narrative, colour can be used literally, poetically or as analogy. Draw in the landscape around the school considering your individual interests explored in the first exercise and use these drawings as inspiration for monoprinting. Experiment with processes and techniques of mark making in oils, being open to a more intuitive way of working. Consider how the combination of self reflection and intuition work in your practice.
Working in series begin to explore source material collected with the techniques practiced. Colour and momentum introduced with a structured exercise then students are supported to begin their own series to develop for the rest of the course.
Continue to develop and ask questions of your work and your response to the landscape. Evolve your series of paintings through layering and reworking with Kerry’s individualised help, observing what challenges and new discoveries emerge.
This course would suit anyone interested in exploring their personal narrative through landscape painting. You might be a more experienced painter looking to embolden your own style and voice or someone interested in exploring landscape painting at an early stage. There will be some time spent outside on the beach and headland, so you should be comfortable walking, carrying your materials and working standing or seated on the ground. However the course is mainly based inside the studio.
This course involves working in oils. We use low odour white spirit and keep the studio well ventilated. However if you have a sensitivity to solvents and oil based products the course might not be suitable.
Our studios are fully equipped and we provide you with all the materials you need for your course. However, if you have a favourite set of brushes or any specialist materials that you would prefer to use, please bring them with you.
The first day starts at 10am and finishes at 4.30pm, please aim to arrive ten to fifteen minutes before the start time.
All course days after that start at 9.30am and finish at 4pm and there will be an hour for lunch. There are plenty of nearby places to eat and we will serve tea and coffee at break times during the day.
Fri 17 - Sun 19 Oct - 3 days
Gary Long
Learn the secrets to capturing the dramatic encounter between sea and land in oils. Convey that fleeting moment when a wave crashes on the shore, its drama, energy and movement in this seascape oil painting course.
Tom Rickman
Learn how to capture twilight in oils, where fading light and the rich colour of the sea and the sky can naturally lead you into abstraction.
Andrew Barrowman
Have you ever wanted to paint outside but unsure where to start? Delve into the practice of oil painting en plein air inspired by the remarkable Cornish landscape.
Martha Holmes
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.
Thu 7 Aug - 3 hour(s)
Marion Taylor
Simplify and refine your painting skills on this half day workshop. Let go of the detail and avoid distraction to create powerful responses in oil paint to interior studies and landscape.
Caroline Robinson
Join large-scale painter Caroline Robinson as she explores her practice of painting intuitively.
Laura Menzies
Enjoy learning about the possibilities of coldwax painting, a technique for adding texture and depth to your work.
