Acrylics and Oil Painting - Wednesday Afternoons
with Simon Klein
Course Dates Autumn Term 2025
Wednesdays 4-6:30pm
17, 24 September
1, 8, 15, 22 October
(Half term 29 October)
5, 12, 19, 26 November
3, 10 December
A course for beginners and improvers
Working from direct observation, students at all levels will be encouraged to explore different uses of paint and colour to respond to shapes, colours, surface textures, reflections and negative shapes as revealed by light.
Through ongoing iterative practice students will learn the following:
Preparatory drawing on paper with charcoal as preparation for understanding form, composition and proportion
Drawing with colour and a brush, blocking in and redrawing with a paint brush
To look at the subject matter as you paint to encourage direct observation rather than outlining
Warm and cold tonal painting through the use of a Zorn palette: Ivory black, Cadmium red(hue), Yellow ochre, Titanium white
Wet into wet technique
Wet over dry technique, scumbling
To mix colour accurately with a warm/cold colour palette
(Over two sessions) how to glaze a dry painting with an ultramarine glaze to reinvigorate the surface, then paint into the wet surface rearranging the drawing and colour arrangements
Use of a viewfinder to help compose an off-centre (and hopefully surprising) image
How to allow light to form the shapes and negative spaces within your painting
How to use a neutral earth textured ground
How to assess what is working and what needs to change. Using a mirror as a corrective aid
To work quickly as a help to understanding composition intuitively
How to use a larger flat brush on the length in order to cover larger areas and the corner of the brush to add detail to shapes
To work with composition, to ensure the whole surface of the painting is active, including negative shapes and the corners of the painting
How to make a finished painting within specific time constraints
We will also…
Select other artists work to study and develop working practices from
Discuss current exhibitions and what we can learn from them
Scheme of Work
From Still Life
1/ Drawing with charcoal on paper to understand form and composition.
2/ Drawing with a paint brush and using a view finder compositionally.
3/ Blocking in areas, working from large areas to smaller, specifics of objects and light.
4/ Explore tonal contrast and warm and cold colour through using the Zorn palette.
4/ Explore warm or cold shadows, with a primary and secondary colour palette.
5/ Learn how to rework the surface with a knife or rag. ‘Use cutting in’ as a means of
redrawing using negative shapes. Knocking back with a glaze.
6/ How to make a painting, in relation to the colour circle, with cold and warm primary
colours (2 yellows, 2 blues, 2 reds,).
Klein Easter Cactus
Advanced students will be encouraged to research good painting supports and substrates that they find conducive to their way of working.
They will also be taught an understanding of pigment numbers in relation to colour and colour effects, and taught to develop a greater understanding of colour and depth in their work through the use of glazes and scumbling on work realised over 2 to 3 weeks.
An advanced student will look more carefully at how to structure a painting so that the negative spaces would count more, so that there would be no dead space across the picture surface. They would be expected to spend more time looking and understanding other paintings they find interesting, how they work and incorporating these ideas in relation to practice and technique into their own work.
Materials:
A3 (16”x12”/42x30 cm) painting boards or paper for acrylic painting. (We tend to go through one of these a week so best to buy in bulk).
A4/A5 canvas boards or primed mdf boards for small landscape studies.
A palette with a thumb hole for your non-drawing hand. Tear off paper palettes with a thumb hole are good.
2 to 3 shallow screw top jars for medium and cleaning fluid. (Jam jars, perhaps a shallower one for the painting medium, deeper for the cleaning jar.)
In acrylic that would be water in both. In oil that would be a painting medium in one and a cleaning spirit in the other.
Go to a proper art shop like Cass Art or Jacksons. Student quality paint from esteemed paint manufacturers is good as it is made in large batches and has to work by reputation, so they wouldn’t make it if students couldn’t get good results from it.
I recommend the following paints:
If working in Oils: Winton, Georgian, Cass art range or Jacksons artist’s paint.
Occasionally one could buy a Professional artists’ range tube like Winsor and Newton artists paint, Jacksons professional etc or even Michael Harding but they are more saturated with coloured pigment and therefore more expensive and stronger than an equivalent student colour.
Cheaper paints like WH Smiths etc will have much more filler in them etc and to be avoided.
If working in Acrylics: Rowney System 3, Cass Art acrylic paint, Galleria.
One can buy a box of eight colours in most of the above ranges, but try and ensure you have the following colours:
Primary colours:
Cad red (hue),
Alizarin crimson,
Cadmium yellow medium (hue),
Lemon yellow/cadmium lemon/light (hue)
Ultramarine blue,
Coeruleum blue
Secondary colour
Viridian or Phalo green
Earth colours and black
Yellow ochre
Raw umber
Burnt sienna
Ivory black
Brushes: Flat, Round or Filbert brushes 6, 8 and 12 size are good. Suitable brushes are hog hair or brushes made from acrylic type materials. Careful of brushes that aren’t stiff enough. Daler-Rowney graduate brushes are relatively cheap especially the bigger ones, and excellent I find for all levels. Stiffer hog hair brushes are easier to control.