Landscape Magic with Oil Paints and Colleen

5 Tuesdays: April 1 to April 29, 2025

Create landscape paintings while learning to observe the numerous colors hidden in the natural world.

Learn techniques to enhance the visual impact of your paintings, infusing them with realism and evoking an emotional resonance in the viewer.

Lesson plan:

Week 1

• We will learn how to use a pallet of primary colors (both cold and warm colors) as we embark upon a landscape of our choice. Artists must bring a photo of a landscape (please bring printouts of the photo). We will identify the darks, mediums, and lights in the pictures and stretch our vision to detect colors other than what we would typically see. This first session will be spent roughing in the scene with these three values (darks, mediums, and lights) and challenging ourselves to see colors unique to the painting.

Week 2

• We will continue with our first landscape painting, blending the colors used on the canvas. We will then identify the light that makes the work stunning. We will introduce a method of using texture if we think it will create additional interest in our landscape painting. For instance, we may want to consider paper towel dabbing, pallet knife strokes, and/or finger blending.

Week 3

• The first half of this class will be spent looking at our completed paintings from a reverse angle, an upside-down view, and a view 8 to 10 feet away. We will record what we find to make ourselves better painters and get us prepped for our second landscape. We will start our second landscape painting during the second hour of the class, prepping the canvas for further details. We will discuss the painting’s orientation. (Students must bring another photo; only printouts, please.)

Week 4

• This lesson will focus on what to leave out, what to put in the painting, what makes your photo reference interesting, and how to capture that on your canvas. We will choose what we will include from the photo and discuss what we like about the painting and why.

Week 5

We will wrap up our second landscape painting by teaching how to incorporate all of those details into the painting. We will address what details lend to the painting, why we want to include them, and how best to do those details.

Materials

Students are responsible for purchasing their materials. The instructor will not be providing any art supplies in class.

The prices below are approximate.

Instructor’s tip: look for sales at Jerry’s Artarama in Norwalk or on Amazon.

Two 11″ X 14″ stretched canvases, $7.00 each

Disposable palette pad with tear-away sheets (for mixing paints), $13.00

Palette knife, $5.50

Paper towels, $1.50 – $2.50 (buy the store brand)

Cup for water to clean brushes (Should hold at least 3 – 4 cups. A coffee can or plastic takeout container will work.)

Water-soluble oil paints (Holbein brand recommended)

• Titanium white, 40ml, $14.00
• Alizarin Crimson, 40ml, $15.00
• Cadmium red, 40ml, $42.00
• Cadmium yellow, 40ml, $27.50
• Lemon Yellow, 40ml, $12.00
• Prussian blue, 40ml, $16.00
• Ultramarine Blue, 40ml, $12.00
• Duo Aqua Oil Linseed Oil, 55ml, $8.50

Brushes (look for assorted sets that may contain the brush types below and sometimes cost less)

• A tiny pointed brush for detail
• ¼-inch brush
• ½-inch brush
• 1-inch brush

About the instructor
Colleen Hains studied Art at UCONN for two years under Rayma Spaulding, an award-winning oil painter who was part of the Hudson River Valley Painters.

She has taught adults, children, seniors, and students with challenges.

Colleen has organized ten one-woman shows over the last five years and has exhibited in numerous shows organized by arts organizations in Connecticut and New York.

She loves painting portraits in oils in addition to her landscapes and still life paintings.

Besides oils, Colleen paints in watercolor and works in pencil, primarily for studies in preparation for painting.

Host or Publisher Coastal Arts Guild of CT