Painting & Drawing

This class meets once a week. See the Class Catalog for exact days and times.

In this course students will explore how artistic work can communicate feelings, meaning and personal insight. Through drawing and painting students will be encouraged to observe and work thoughtfully with color and form and create artwork that expresses their own ideas and experiences. The aim is not only to build technical skills but also to help students discover how artistic work can become a meaningful form of personal expression.

The class will spend time discussing the work produced and looking at examples from other artists so that students can see how different artists approach similar ideas in very different ways.

Students will begin by exploring how color can communicate meaning. Students will work with warm and cool colors and look at how color alone can express emotion. Through a series of paintings students will experiment with how color can represent feelings such as fear, anger, sadness, joy, and calm.

After working with color, students will move into looking at symbolism used by artists and within society. Students will consider how symbols can communicate ideas, beliefs, and identity. Using this understanding they will create work that explores how symbols can be used to express personal themes and ideas in their artwork. This part of the course encourages students to make deeper connections with the subjects they choose to draw or paint.

Throughout the year we will also work with a range of different artistic media including pencil, watercolor, collage and acrylic paint. These materials allow students to approach drawing and painting in different ways while continuing to strengthen their skills.

A major focus of the course will be an introduction to oil painting. Students will learn the basics of working with oils, including preparation of materials, colour mixing, layering of paint and building depth within a painting. During this part of the course students will work mainly in oils so they can gain confidence with the medium. The skills developed here will lead into a larger independent painting project during the second semester.