We are delighted to share a selection of work from students currently studying our Oil Painting Certificate Course, all tackling their very first assignment.
The opening exercise asks students to work directly from observation using a restricted palette, exploring the relationship between light and dark as the primary focus of the painting. It is a deliberately challenging brief that asks students to trust their eyes, loosen their grip on control, and let the paint lead the way. The results, from this wonderfully varied group of students, are a joy to share.
Esraa Kalander has chosen a richly layered interior, a studio or home office space with a laptop in the foreground, office chairs receding into the distance, and a beautifully painted curtain catching the light. The composition has real depth, drawing the eye through several planes of space, and the tonal range from the deep blacks of the laptop to the luminous whites of the curtain fabric is handled with impressive confidence.
Harry Rouillard has taken us into what appears to be a workshop or pottery shed, with shelving, a workbench and a window beyond letting in a warm glow of outside light. The perspective is beautifully controlled, with the receding bench top and structural elements giving a strong sense of a real, inhabited space. It is a quietly atmospheric piece with a lovely sense of stillness.
Hnin Lei Soe has produced a striking and poetic painting, a view through a dark window frame out to a cityscape of tower blocks and clouds beyond. The warm burnt umber tones against the pale cream of the sky give the whole piece an almost dreamlike quality, the city feeling both familiar and remote through the dark frame of the window. It is a beautifully composed and atmospheric first painting.
Oleksandra Pavliuchenko has chosen a magnificent arched window as her subject, and the result is one of the most structurally elegant paintings in this collection. The crisp white of the window frame glows against the deep warm brown of the surrounding wall, and beyond the glass, trees and a neighbouring building sit in soft, moody tones. The arch itself is drawn with real confidence, and the composition feels balanced and assured.
Patricia Landon has submitted two contrasting pieces that together show wonderful range. Her loosely handled pine cone study is a bold, energetic piece with lively, gestural brushwork, while her landscape, with its sweeping trees, path and farm building glimpsed through the foliage, has a wonderful sense of movement and atmosphere. The brushwork in both pieces is free and expressive, and the warm and cool tones within the restricted palette are used with real sensitivity.
Rodica Mandroc also brings us two lovely paintings. The winter scene, with its solitary swing set standing in a snow-covered landscape between two bare trees, has a quietly melancholy beauty, the empty swing and mountain backdrop giving the whole composition a real sense of stillness and mood. Her interior, a beautifully rendered armchair alongside a geometric side table with a glass vase of twigs, is calm and considered, with lovely attention to the tonal relationships between the pale wall, the furniture and the warm wooden floor.
What unites all of these paintings is the willingness to commit, to look carefully and to trust the process. Working with a restricted palette and no preparatory drawing is not easy, and yet each of these students has produced something genuinely personal and expressive. We cannot wait to see where the rest of the course takes them.
If you would like to find out more about our Oil Painting Certificate Course, please do follow the link.
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