I did a painting course last week. I've been taking photographs for over 40 years, but painting is something relatively new for me, so I have no real grounding in what you might call the 'craft' skills. I have tried a few abstracts, but so far I have nothing much to show for a lot of paint! I'm happier with printmaking and have now sold quite a few small monoprints, where serendipity is perhaps as important as any technical skill and also some collagraphs.
So, I decided to do a course. If I was even 10 years younger I might have considered doing a formal qualification, but at (almost) 63 I don't feel I have the time to mess around. Picking a course proved harder than I thought, since there are probably hundreds available online. I was tempted by courses in France or Skye or Wales, but in the end decided to start much closer to home with a two day 'Starter' course. I didn't want to take the chance on finding myself hundreds of miles away from home with a tutor who hadn't a clue or finding I hadn't any skill at all (or both). The course I picked was only about 90 minutes away and was one of the very few that was explicitly targeted at complete beginners. Many others talked about taking everyone from beginners to advanced, but I needed someone to hold my hand.
My first worry was blown away within minutes by the tutor. Caroline Hulse is a professional artist, but more importantly she can communicate. Within half an hour she had us painting a landscape from a photograph, taking us in easy stages through types of brush, basic composition, underpainting, simple tonal values, working wet in wet, different sorts of mark. She introduced all of these things so smoothly that no one seemed thrown by the challenge. Too many beginners course try to rush things through so that you have to assimilate a huge amount of information very rapidly and in the end of course you don't. She seemed to be more interested in giving us confidence than in imparting any ideas of 'art'.
In a post at The Empty Easel, some concerns are expressed about 'The Bob Ross' method.
First...the way that Bob Ross teaches, most of his students’ paintings end up looking just like his. This may be fine in the beginning, but all it does in the long run is encourage a dependence on Bob Ross. In other words, what happens when a truly dedicated “Bob Ross Methods” painter wants to paint a scene that Bob never covered? Where do they go for help?
There’s really nowhere TO go. They’re stuck, because they were never taught how to come up with ideas for paintings on their own.
Second, those who do strike out on their own find out they only know how to paint from their imagination like Bob did. But the problem with painting from your imagination is that your imagination will always be a poor imitation of reality.
...
The best painters LOOK at what they’re painting, and paint directly from the source, whether they’re painting trees, a person, or fruit in a bowl.
Thirdly, there’s not enough room to grow artistically when you paint the “Bob Ross” way. His techniques show how to make simple, cookie-cutter paintings, but he offers no techniques for improving, and no deeper insights into art at all. The proof of that is Bob Ross himself—he painted pretty much the same way throughout his entire life.
When looking for a course I was concerned about this myself - I didn't want to learn how to paint like 'X', I wanted to learn how to paint. In the event, while Caroline was teaching us to work in a loosely impressionistic manner I never felt that this was being pushed too hard. The work that was produced on this first day
had similarities, but these were outweighed by the differences. There
was never any suggestion that this was 'the way' so that there was lots
of room for individual judgement as this photo (taken by Caroline) shows.I have no illusions that any of us produced a masterpiece, but no one, least of all Caroline thought that we would. Even so, at 9.30 am on that first day, I had no expectation of producing anything even 1/10 as good as the limited piece I'm holding in this picture.
Day two saw us working on a still life. I must admit that the idea of a still life filled me with horror. I could have done another landscape, but in the end I persevered, on the basis that it was only by moving out of my comfort zone - which in painting terms is very tiny - that I would learn anything.I was really pleased therefore to find that I enjoyed this immensely. I know there are many things wrong with the painting both in terms of composition and execution, but for the first time ever I felt I had produced a 'real' painting.
I finished the flower painting about an hour early. Caroline gave me another canvas and I set out to produce an abstract in that hour. I quickly sketched out a composition in my notebook and started painting. Again I never expected to produce a masterpiece in an hour, but within its limits, I feel that once again produced a 'real' painting.
When I was looking for a course, I wanted two things. I wanted a grounding in some basic technique and I wanted a feeling that I could use that to move forward. The first was certainly achieved. There are still lots of things I need to know - more about colour and composition for instance - but I have somewhere to start. The information about underpainting alone was hugely helpful. The second is up to me. I need to start producing work and I have already started planning some paintings. Watch this space.
