Abstraction 1 - Developing
Liz Hough
Over 4 recordings, explore Liz's processes of painting, collage and print. Emerge confident in experimentation with a cohesive collection of new works and ideas.
Course details
Join us in the quiet, calm winter streets of St Ives and paint like an impressionist. Learn to build lusciously layered oil paintings in a single sitting.
Make the most of the mild, sunny climate of St Ives this winter on this course led by artist Andrew Barrowman. Due to its southerly latitude and influence of the Gulf Stream, St Ives has a mild and sunny climate all year round. Enjoy exploring the quiet, calm cobbles and coastal paths of the town in wintertime, making the most of this peaceful time of year.
Working both outside and in our historic Porthmeor Studios, you’ll spend time building sketches, enhancing your focus on your subject and discovering the hidden glimpses that reveal themselves the longer you look. Experiment with alternative materials – watercolour, pastel and coloured pencil – to capture strong lines, subtle flickers of light and vibrant tone. You’ll find that unlike a photograph, these sketches become a piece of the place and process, helping you savour that inspiration from home or the studio.
Learn how the shades and tones of winter can be captured in oil and see how the cooler palettes of this season can create a particular atmosphere. You’ll gain insight into oil painting techniques that enable you to work faster, more instinctively and bring hidden depth to your paintings. One of these is working alla prima, or wet-on-wet. It can be a tricky technique to master, Andrew shows you how to approach it with confidence and control, teaching you strategies for how to create impasto layers without your colours becoming muddy.
Spend a revelatory few days working with landscape to bring vibrancy and focus into your practice, creating paintings that don’t just decorate, but captivate.
Day to day plan
Day 1
In the morning, you will spend some time outside. Back in the studios in the afternoon, we’ll develop some monochromatic oil studies using work from the sketches and create another alla prima painting honing in on subject and tone..
Day 2
In the morning, we’ll walk from the studios to the harbour, sketching with oil pastels, watercolour and coloured pencils in our sketchbooks.
In the afternoon, we will begin with some colour mixing exercises using a three colour palette. Utilising the location sketches, we will begin an alla prima painting in oils. This will be on a white panel in a very limited palette, to explore the impact of a few colours on the atmosphere of a painting.
Day 3
Working in the studio we will look at the paintings from the previous days and choose 1 or 2 to develop further. We will look at how ‘cooler’ colours for winter landscape painting and a limited palette work to unify a painting. There will be some colour mixing to explore complimentary colours and their use in a painting – helping bring it to life.
What you will learn
- Techniques for working en plein air
- How to work quickly in oils using the alla prima technique.
- How and why to use ground colours in your painting.
- How to make sketches using different materials to use as resources in the studio in place of photographs.
- How to establish and capture a subject using observational skills.
Who would this course suit?
Whatever your skill or experience in oils, this course offers an instinctive and atmospheric way to engage with landscape. In particular the challenges of boats and water. We will be working outside so be prepared for changes in weather and wrap up warm!
Taught by
What to Bring
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.
Timings and Breaks
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.
FAQs
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