These first three courses are designed to give the artist a firm foundation in oil painting.

Course 1 – The Art Bootcamp

This high-intensity course will instill new habits and a systematic way of approaching your painting. It will also sharpen your eyes like nothing else. Most people don’t learn this in four years of art school. You’ll do it in four lessons (as I said…it is intense).

We will concentrate on a very narrow aspect of art – painting technique, control of Values and Color Temperatures. This lies at the basis of good representational painting (it’s Sargent’s main claim to fame). Although they are discussed, composition, drawing and other aspects of painting are peripheral to the main thrust of this course…which is how to get the images inside your head to go through your arm to your hand and into the brush. The course is arranged with an eye toward imparting the maximum amount of knowledge in the shortest time…not just imparting it, but imbedding it.

Course 2 – The Portrait Course

As with the Boot Camp, the Portrait Course is a high-intensity course unlike anything you have experienced. The purpose is to get you painting portraits with assurance and in less time than you thought possible. It’s easy once you know how.

The first thing that you will learn is how to light the subject for form and for drama. You will learn different lighting schemes, when to use them and how to create them. You’ll learn that daylight is dull light without drama, when compared to what you can create with a few simple lights.

Course 3 – The Technical Course

This course teaches the things that get overlooked in art school and the university, that is to say – a thorough understanding of artist’s materials and tools, what they are designed to do, when to chose them and how to guarantee that your paintings will be technically sound and permanent.

This is an information-packed course that does not overlook any aspect of what has proved to be the best practices over the centuries.