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2026 Semester COURSES

We offer an 8-week Oil Painting Foundations class, designed to help beginner painters build confidence and explore new techniques at a comfortable pace.

Come learn the basics of oil painting in a friendly community environment! In this 8 week course, we will gain familiarity with the materials, learn fundamentals of composition and value, and explore color through a variety of references. Each week we will build new skills that will give you the knowledge and confidence to create an independent work by the end of the course.

What to Bring:

Class Overview:

Week 1

We will introduce the materials and talk through oil paint safety and cleaning. We’ll do a value exercise to learn about tones and introduce palette knife mixing.

Week 2

We will learn about composition, observing accurately, and sketching via the triangulation method. As an exercise we will reproduce a monochrome photo reference.

Week 3

We will begin with a color mixing exercise, familiarizing students with the color wheel and basics of color theory. We will then reproduce a full color photo reference.

Week 4

I will set up a still life for this class as a reference. We will add to our learnings about composition and sketching as each student takes on prepping their canvas then painting the still life from their own perspective. We will discuss the effects of light and shadows on the objects as we paint.

Week 5

We will continue work on the still life from the previous week. Students will experience adding paint to previously dried paint, building layers of depth and adding details.

Week 6

We will expand our knowledge of color by learning about 2 classical palettes and how they are used in painting human skin tones. As an exercise, each student will paint their own hand, noticing the variations of warm and cool tones.

Week 7

Students will choose their own reference for an independent painting, that will be a culmination of all they’ve learned this semester. We will walk through the steps of set-up together and I will be on hand for additional guidance.

Week 8

Students will continue their work from the previous week with guidance as needed. We will wrap up this final week with a showcase of students’ work and share our learnings and observations from the class.