Oil Painting for Beginners: Expressive Portraits

Learn to draw and paint expressive portraits in real-time with Liam Kelleher. In this 4 hour workshop you will learn how to get to grips with the most mysterious of painting mediums: Oils. In Part 1, Liam will show you how to prepare a board, showcase all of the tools, pigments and mediums that you can use and how to transfer a sketch to a wood panel or canvas.  Liam breaks down the misconceptions surround the medium while showing you how to get started with mixing skin tones and looking at the relationships between colours in order to create harmony and colour contrasts. In Part 2, Liam reveals how to prepare the surface for a new layer of paint, how to blend colour effectively and also how abstraction can be a powerful tool to creat appeal in an expressive portrait. 
 
PART 1:
Introduction
My journey with oils
Surfaces
How to prime a surface
Transferring a sketch
Laying a ground 
Oil Paint overview
Brushes
Oil Painting mediums
Painting: Establishing darks
Painting: Blocking in
Painting: Blending
 
Part 2:
Painting: Oiling out the board
Painting: Refining the face
Painting: Refining the hair
Painting: Abstracting the background 
 
BONUS MATERIALS
Getting started – Quick guide to getting started on the course
Materials List – including links to products
Reference Images
Artwork - PDF of the sketch which can be used to print and transfer to the board
Artwork – PDF of the final version of the painting 
 
 
 
Liam has a warm, down-to-earth approach to teaching, with countless years honing his approach in the classroom for over 5 years in private classes and at a college and university level. The course is well suited for absolute beginners as well as more advanced artists looking to familiarise themselves with a structured approach and process that will help them realise consistently excellent portraits.