The painter Johannes Vermeer (1632 -1675) is widely thought to have used a camera obscura to project an image onto the canvas to create his paintings.

In fact artists have used modern methods and techniques to create great art throughout history.

 This course will help you use photographs as reference material. We will look at how photographic reference has helped artists create paintings using techniques such as the grid or projecting the image onto a canvas. We will reference traditional and contemporary artists as we look at these techniques and you will be offered the opportunity to try these techniques yourself. A focus of this course is to explore how using a photograph as reference not only opens up the subject matter to a wider range of possibilities but also will allow you to explore mark-making techniques and different tools to make marks such as palette knives and rags as well as the traditional brush.