This course will introduce you to painting the figure, both nude and clothed. It will help develop your understanding of colour mixing, looking at proportion, considering negative space and finding shapes to help create a likeness and develop compositions. You'll learn how to create figure paintings by starting with drawing, how to paint fabrics and materials as well as the figure, and how to consider the background as an integral part of the painting.

Investigating colour as form will enable you to think about colour theory and explore a synthesis of processes, structure and surface. You will be encouraged to consider how you develop a composition, specificity of colour choice and surface fracture (handling of the paint). You will be encouraged to experiment the interaction of colour throughout the course; ​it’s fluidity, chromatic value, scale and dynamic juxtapositions. The context and theory will be important in underpinning your initial exploration. Your relationship with the mechanics of painting will develop from collage experiments particularly focused on colour contrast and form, collages produced will be a spring-board for a series of abstract colour compositions. From Matisse to the colour field painters such as Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler and contemporary colourist such as Sarah morris, Tauber Auerbach, Selma Parlour and others.

You'll explore the skills required to achieve effective results when working from photographs instead of from life. You will consider the problems of painting from photographs and ways of overcoming these, as well the advantages. The course will Introduce the skills needed to produce photorealistic images, but doesn’t limit you to painting in this way.

Using a range of contemporary source material, such as digital images, the moving image and images from social media, you'll consider and explore the representation of the contemporary body in painting. This course will introduce you to the analysis of different types of image and how they are viewed and consumed. Considering the work of contemporary and modern painters, you'll study a range of approaches artists have adopted to how they view or use the body. You will explore the language of paint and its dialogue with found images, migrating techniques from photography and film to painting (zooming, blurring, cropping, pixelating etc.) and 're-materialising' the body in your artworks through visceral paint application.

This course aims to explore, test, and discover the properties and potential of a range of traditional and non-traditional paints and surfaces. You’ll expand and develop your understanding of what paint can do, and the specific material qualities of numerous paints. You will investigate how various paints (including acrylics, spray paints and gloss paints) feel and handle, and how you can use different approaches with them.

This course will help you discover what it is about painting that motivates and inspires you. You will explore how to develop ideas from initial sketches, how to refine ideas and how to develop coherent work. You will be encouraged to adopt a disciplined creative thinking dialogue in your painting practice, which will enable a more informed approach to your work.

A stimulating and informative exploration of some of the artists working within the discipline of portraiture today, this course will consider the concerns artists are addressing through their painting and the varying techniques they have adopted to do so. Students will be encouraged to respond to the work surveyed through a series of practical exercises where they will use a variety of technical approaches to create portraits from a range of different starting points. We will begin each week with a discussion about the artists whose work we will be looking at, considering the issues they are addressing, their subject matter, their source material, the techniques they are using and the relationship between these various elements in their work. The discussion will be supplemented by information via videos, articles, monographs and other art publications to further introduce you to the work of the artists discussed and to examine their approaches and subject matter. This will be followed by practical investigation through set tasks with a different focus each week, inspired by an individual or group (school) of artists.

The proliferation of digital images in society has made the image more disposable and less open to visual critical discourses. This course will explore how the manipulation of pictorial space can create new and exciting directions in painting – by fragmenting, obscuring and intertwining images into the pictorial space and by using a series of techniques and conceptual approaches that question the normal conventions of background/foreground relationships.

Engage with still life painting in a fresh and exciting manner. You'll look in-depth at the work of both contemporary and historical artists for whom still life is a major focus, and discuss why the genre is still relevant today. You'll consider the use of objects for their symbolic value as well as their aesthetic properties, examining the abstract form, shape, colour and tone of the objects observed, and exploring how to use all this information to create interesting and contemporary paintings. Working in oil, you'll be encouraged to approach the act of painting with a balance of instinct and analysis, growing your technical understanding of a variety of mediums and materials, whilst also developing observational, critical and creative skills.

An introduction to different approaches to portraiture and figure painting, taught by experienced, pre-eminent portrait and figure painters. This runs every term with different tutors, and a slightly different emphasis (to include portraiture, figure painting and life painting). Working with a model on a series of poses, you’ll deal with tone and colour, proportion, lighting, composition, negative space, and will consider how to create a narrative depth.