4 week course, Thursday evenings, 6-8pm, 4th – 25th September
Full course £80 or £72 for Two Queens members
Book your place on Eventbrite here

Join us for this intermediate level, 4-week course with artist Tom Robertson to develop your skills in making portraits with Oil Paint.

In this course participants will have space to develop their understanding of how paint handles and hone their approach to colour palette mixing as a basis for effective portraits. Through the 4 week course, participants will explore why the ‘ground’ of a painting is useful for underpinning the entire image, before working with a restrictive four-colour palette in the stages of underpainting and deadcolouring, building the painting through alternating cool and warm values, as found in some Dutch Master paintings. The final week will see the paintings refined and shifted to finalise the composition through glazing, scumbles and velatura.

Each week Tom will guide participants through a series of exercises, with time for independent working, producing a series of studies and outcomes.

Course Structure

Week 1: Preparation of surface with a traditional ground & exercises in committing to mark making through confident brushwork
Week 2: Underpainting 1: Establishing and correcting form through cool tones
Week 3: Underpainting 2: Deadcolouring with warm tones
Week 4: Introducing colour through glazing, scumbles and velatura
All materials and equipment for this course are provided. Participants are encouraged to bring a colour portrait photograph to work from.

This is an intermediate level course, aimed at those with some experience in painting and/or figurative drawing, and who are looking to develop their skills further. If you are a complete beginner, please consider signing up for our ‘Oil Painting from Life’ workshop first.