Still Life Painting
with Simon Klein
A course for beginners and improvers
Using a hot and cold palette of primary, secondary and earth colours of either acrylic paint or oil paint, you will learn to paint from the direct observation of still life subject matter; capturing effects of light, and surface textures, through, the use of paint and colour mixing.
Using view finders as well as reflecting more intuitive forms of picture making you will learn to draw with a paintbrush, looking at proportion and composition.
Paint techniques will include alla prima painting, glazing, scumbling, scraping off with a palette knife, sgraffito techniques and the use of large and small soft and brittle paintbrushes.
We will work with a variety of still life set-ups culminating in longer two week still live poses, in which you will learn to rework a painting by applying a coloured glaze..
Scheme of Work
1/ Drawing with the paint brush and using a view finder compositionally.
2/ Blocking in areas, working from large areas to smaller specifics of objects and light.
3/ Explore warm or cold shadows with a primary and secondary colour palette.
4/ 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.
5/ How to make a painting with a cold and warm primary colour (2 yellows, 3 blues, 2 reds,) in relation to the colour circle.
Advanced Students
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 put 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 8 colours in most of the above ranges, but try and ensure you have the following colours:
Titanium White - Cad red (hue) - Alizarin crimson - Cadmium yellow (hue) - Lemon yellow or cadmium lemon - Ultramarine blue - Coeruleum blue(hue) - Viridian or Pthalo green - Yellow ochre - Raw umber - Burnt sienna
Brushes: Flat , Round or filbert brushes 6, 8 and 12 size are good, in 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.