Welcome and thank you for choosing oil painting as your skill for the Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award!
This course is designed especially for beginners, so you don’t need any previous experience with painting. I’ll guide you step by step through the basics of working with oils, and by the end you’ll have built confidence and created a body of work you can be proud of.
Before you begin, please check each section for the materials list and any printouts to help you along the way.
Have fun, explore your creativity and enjoy the journey! Please join the private community to share your work and progress with others.
Catherine will assess your work at the end of the course and submit a final report via the assessors portal
Welcome to my studio!
I'm so glad you've chosen to join me. This course is designed especially for beginners, so don’t worry if you’re completely new to oil painting - we’ll take it step by step.
I hope you find the lessons easy to follow, enjoyable, and creatively inspiring.
Please take a moment to check each section before you begin. You’ll find a list of specific materials you'll need, along with any helpful printouts to support your learning.
Watch the videos for each module at your own pace - you may need to pause from time to time to follow along, and that’s absolutely fine. Each module should take around an hour to complete, but just work at whatever speed feels comfortable to you.
Happy painting!
Objective: Develop confidence in use of brushes and palette knife.
Laying out palette
Mixing oil paint on the palette with palette knife
Brief introduction to Piet Mondrian
Colour mixing basics Mini Project: Create a Mondrian style painting with primary colours, and a secondary value mix.
Light, Shadow & Form Objective: To understand basics of greyscale and value.
Light sources and values
Mixing a range of values using only black and white paint
Look at Picasso's Guernica.
Monochrome Mini Project: Monochrome painting of two penguins, using downloadable templates for outline and value chart.
Colour & Mood Objective: Explore how colours affect mood and emotion.
Selecting an analogous palette from the colour wheel
Warm vs. cool tones
Look at Picasso blue paintings and Van Gogh ‘Sunflowers’
S0ourcing refernce images and using smart phone to create compostion
How colour sets the mood of a painting Mini Project: Create an abstract (ish!) mood painting with 2-3 colours
Brushwork & Texture Objective: Develop handling and texture techniques using brushes and palette knife.
Brush types and uses. Palette knife in painting
Techniques: laying down flat paint, impasto.
Look at two contrasting Scottish contemporary landscape painters and their use of texture. John Lowry Morrison and Ron Lawson
Palette knife basics Mini Project: Landscape painting following simple format.
Self portrait – week one Objective: Introduce portrait basics.
How to take a good reference photo
Look at Rembrandt’s self portraits
Finding shadow forms
Priming canvas and transferring drawing
Self portrait Mini Project: Simple self-portrait using a selfie from phone.
Module 7: Self portrait - week two Objective: Introduce portrait basics.
Mixing skin tones
Simplifying values
Finding the shadow forms, half tones and highlights
Self portrait Mini Project: Painting a self-portrait using last weeks photo and drawing.
Still Life - The Basics Objective: Apply skills to a simple still life painting.
The importance of composition
Look at still life paintings by Paul Cezanne and contemporary artists.
Using template and reference photo create painting
Still life painting Main Project: Still life of one to two objects.