Courses

Drawing as a Foundation for Painting

Painting in the Realist Tradition

Block 1

Painting the Sublime: The Painting Method of the Flemish School
(Representative artists of this school are Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Eyck, and Bosch)
This method is characterized by deep transparent warm shadows and strong opaque impastoed lights. Light values predominate over color. The painting begins with a sketch of neutral unified shadows from where the lighted areas emerge in full force with scumbled, texturized brushtrokes. This painting method is most appropriate to portray Mystery, Pathos, and the Sublime.

Block 2

Painting Truth: The Painting Method of the Florentine School
(Representative artists of this school are DaVinci, Raphael, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Pontorno)
This method begins with a fully detailed monochromatic underpainting. Usually in a verdacceo (shades of earthy green). The underpainting is then painted over in warm transparent and opaque colors, letting the underpaint show through on some areas. This is a very useful method for portraiture and themes that require the most realistic representation.

Block 3

Painting Glory: The Painting Method of the Venetian School
(Representative artists of this school are Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, and Veronesse)
Artists from this region often began their paintings in a sketchy monocromatic warm underpainting. Over this underpaint they applied a velatura (veiling) in translucent white to lighten the underpaint. Then they glazed over the velatura with transparent pigments, giving their works nuances of color impossible to achieve in any other way. This method is most appropriate for works portraying the Dreamy and the Heroic.

Block 4

Painting Beauty: The 19th Century Academic Method
(Representative artists of this school are Bouguereau, Gerome, Waterhouse, and Leighton)
This method calls for direct application of color, partially mixing colors on the canvas via frottagge. The painting begins as a mosaic of large shapes that are progressively broken down and adjusted to each other to achieve full detail towards the end. The method taught in this curriculum is actualized to a modern palette of 18 vibrant colors. This method is most Appropriate to portray Elegance and Beauty.

Block 5

Painting Exuberance: The Painting Method of the Spanish Bravura School
(Representative artists of this school are Velazquez, Goya, Sorolla, and Sargent)
This is the Alla Prima method. The artist attempts to build the painting in individual, accurate brushstrokes that convey character and mood. Each brushstroke is compared to previous brushwork for position, shape, color and tone. Unsatisfactory brushstrokes are scraped and redone until accuracy is achieved.
This method is most appropriate to convey intensity, life force, and full presence of being.

Along these five instruction blocks, students learn the following technical foundations of Oil Painting:

Foundations of Oil Painting: Materials and Methods
Preparing your own painting surfaces—methods and materials
Preparing gesso-primed boards
Preparing gesso-primed canvases
Preparing oil-primed canvases
Preparing oil-primed linens
Imprimaturas
Pigments and their properties
Pigment families
Brands and their quality
Transparency, ligthfastness and tinting power
Practial color theory
Tone, hue and intensity.
Warm and cool colors
Mixing colors
Keeping colors vibrant
Oil mediums and their properties:
Linseed, stand and sun-thickened oils
Alkyd mediums
Damar and mastic varnishes
Oil-Tempera medium
Maroger’s medium
Brushes and painting knives
Care of brushes
Brush shapes and their function: rounds, flats, brights, filberts, fans
Brush materials and their function: hog bristle, synthetic and sable
Painting knives: shapes and functions.
Techniques for controlling transparency, tone, color, texture and edges
Brush handling
Toning, massing, underpainting, impasto and glazing
Layering up and scraping down
Scumbling, blending and frottagge
Elements of Composition