Painting Fundamentals: Watercolor, Acrylic, and Oil Painting

A transformational exploration of the transitions of the fall season immersed with the natural world and fresh painting techniques! An in-depth exploration of four mediums in six weeks, the most comprehensive painting course we have ever offered.

Nature artist and island painter Pamela Hoke presents an immersive journey for all experience levels exploring sensory expressions of leaves and foliage in water soluble graphite, watercolor, natural acrylic and oil painting.

Week One | Connecting with the Leaves and Foliage in Transition, Sketching

Learn to plan art compositions that convey they “whys” and feelings in your own unique visual language beginning with rough composition planning sketching techniques. Create the favorite composition into a large work, learning water soluble graphite techniques and potent shading and expressive value and textures.

Week Two | Deepen Composition and Expression with Watercolors

Expand upon the sketches from week one by creating 2-3 variations in watercolor. Learn Pam’s unique approach to watercolors that helps unleash expression and depth, and tips on embracing the wonders of watercolors as a transportable medium that encourages spontaneous creativity anywhere – the magic of traveling with water pens.

Week Three | Acrylic Paint Expressions on Canvas

Move into two variations on canvas, with some interesting techniques of color mixing, laying in basic color areas then enjoying the soothing magic of blending and expressive lines. Exploring the application of the studies from week one and two in acrylic expressions using new natural earth paint, plant-based acrylics.

Week Four | Continued Acrylic Paint Expressions on Canvas

Deepening, enriching and finalizing our acrylic expressions with details, highlights and collaborative support for each other.

Week Five | Natural Earth Paint and Walnut Oil Paint Expressions on Canvas

Learn the magic of mixing our own earth-based pigments with walnut oil and natural plant-based solvents. Create the ideal color palettes from our initial compositions and explorations from weeks 1-4. Learn approaches to underpainting, laying color areas and blends.

Week Six | Natural Earth Paint and Walnut Oil Paint Expressions on Canvas

Deepening our understanding or our own natural visual language, refining our oil pieces with more techniques in line exploration, highlights and contrasts. Collaborative reflections with nature, celebration and connecting, photographing the collections of our fall foliage series in all mediums.

This class is taught by painter

Dates: Sundays from 3-6pm - 1/5, 1/12, 1/19, 1/26, 2/2, and 2/9.

Materials: A materials list will be sent in your confirmation email.

This class is held in the dome on the AAC campus. Directions and parking information will be included in your confirmation email.

Registration: Please register early if you are able, as it helps us to assure that classes meet their minimums in order to run! If you register more than three weeks before this class begins, a 20% early bird discount will automatically be applied to your ticket at checkout.

A Note on Ticket Pricing: We are offering sliding scale tickets in order to keep our classes accessible to as many community members as possible. There are three price tiers. Sustaining tickets help us continue to invest in programming. Full price tickets cover the costs associated with running classes. Accessibility tickets are priced below what it costs for us to run a class. If the cost of a full price ticket is a hardship, we encourage you to purchase a sliding scale ticket. If you can pay the full price or sustaining price, please choose that option so we can keep providing arts programming to the community.

Tuition Assistance: Tuition assistance is available for Alchemy classes and workshops if finances are a barrier. Apply for tuition assistance here.

Host or Publisher Alchemy Art Center