Advanced Figure Painting
Learning to break a rule well requires understanding it first. Over seven weeks, this course moves through two distinct approaches to oil figure painting: a rigorous engagement with the academic tradition, followed by a structured exploration of how that foundation can be stretched, subverted, and made personal. A live model is present throughout.
What to Expect
The first three sessions are devoted to a single painting, developed slowly in layers – the logic of academic oil painting from first marks to finished surface. From session four onward, the pace changes: four paintings in four sessions, each guided by a different concept.
The Traditional Study
The first session opens with an overview of traditional and contemporary approaches to figurative painting and introduces the academic process step by step. From there, you will work on a single oil painting from the live model across three sessions – building paint layers slowly, understanding the internal logic of the method before moving on.
Contemporary Explorations
Session four shifts the frame: an introduction to contemporary figurative painting covers relevant techniques, materials, and conceptual starting points. Each of the remaining sessions, you will complete one new painting from the model – guided by a specific theme such as composition, form, light, or color as a means of finding your own approach.
The thread connecting both halves is the question the course works toward: how do visual reference and painterly knowledge combine to produce something distinctly yours? Personal style not as an abstract goal, but as a synthesis of model observation and learned technique. Each participant receives individual feedback across all sessions.
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