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Picture Making: Composition & Design
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Picture Making: Composition & Design

£415.00

Saturdays

8 November / 13 December 10.00am – 4.00pm
6 weeks / No half term break

Tutors: Carl Randall

Course #: SA11

Bookings for this course will be released on 27-May-2025 at 14:00

SKU: SA11 Categories: , , , Tags: , , , , , ,

Description

Picture Making: Composition & Design

In this course, you’ll explore the process behind making imaginative compositions.

Creating exciting compositions and visualising images that are in your imagination is difficult to do – this course looks at various techniques artists use to bring an imagined image into reality.

The course focuses on acquiring the skills and information necessary to construct imagined compositions, encouraging a variety of approaches, media and experimentation.

An illustrated presentation is given at the start of each lesson, to explain and put in context the ideas explored.

Any level welcome!

— Lesson 1: Empty Space in Art
An exercise focused on incorporating negative/blank/empty space into compositions. These ideas used in traditional East Asian art (and its influence on picture-making in general) will also be looked at.

— Lesson 2: How the eye moves around pictures
You will be shown examples of how artists throughout history carefully constructed their images to guide the viewers’ eye around compositions, creating a flow and to help the eye look at everything, or to point towards something important within the picture.

— Lesson 3: Borrowing from Art History
As a starting point for an original composition, you will take ideas and visual elements artworks from history, using collage and line drawing to develop your own composition.

— Lesson 4: Movement, Drama & Dynamism in Art
Looking at how various artists have tried to achieve a sense of movement, drama and dynamism in pictures.

— Lesson 5: Japanese Woodblock prints
Looking at the influence of Japanese Woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e) on picture making, and trying out compositions influenced by their language.

— Lesson 6: Still-life (thumbnail sketches)
A lesson designed to explore the idea of generating and developing composition ideas via the use of ‘thumbnail sketches’.

Featured Paintings: Carl Randall

Saturdays

8 November / 13 December 10.00am – 4.00pm
6 weeks / No half term break

Tutors: Carl Randall

Course #: SA11

Materials List

Materials required:

Lesson 1:

A large piece of paper the same size as your canvas. Your canvas will be ideally coloured mid-tone grey,

pencil and eraser.

Then:

Oil paints (any well-known brand): Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Burnt Umber, Ivory Black, Ultramarine Blue; Sap Green or Terre Verte.

Brushes: assorted sizes of bristle, synthetic and sable brushes, including filberts, rounds and flats. Very small pointed brushes are important (for very fine sharp detail). Very large brushes are not required.

A3 Palette (tear off better than wood). Ideally grey colour.

Palette knife

Jam jar with lid

Pipette (eye dropper).

Rags

Oil painting boards or stretched canvas (largest or second largest one available from school shop).

Any oil Painting Medium (but preferably not slow drying).

Odourless solvent (Sansodor).

Note: you do not need all of the above items from the very start. They can be bought at the start of each lesson from the school shop. when needed for each lesson.

Sessions with Fred Crayk:

Lesson 2 (The second session)

charcoal, pencils, paper. (all available in the college shop)

The second 5 week block of lessons

oil paint (same selection of paints as Carl Randall above).

hog-hair brushes; various sizes,

palette knife (trowel shaped).

palette

dippers

canvas and/or canvas boards (available from the college shop)

 

Please only bring low odour thinners (eg Winsor & Newton Sansodor). You can buy this from the school shop. For health & safety reasons we do not allow the use of white spirit or turpentine at Heatherleys.

 

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