Discover the joy of painting in this friendly, hands-on course designed especially for beginners. Over six weeks, you’ll learn essential techniques in acrylics, including colour mixing, brushwork, composition, and creating depth and texture. With step-by-step guidance and plenty of time to practice, you’ll build confidence, develop your creative skills, and complete your own finished artwork. No experience needed—just enthusiasm and a willingness to explore your artistic side!

Session 1: Getting Started: Tools & Materials

Meet your materials, learn health & safety basics, and discover how to properly clean and care for your paintbrushes. Begin understanding the importance of surface preparation, before painting.

Session 2: Understanding Acrylics & the Stay-Wet Palette

Discover the characteristics of acrylic paint, how to keep colours workable longer, and practise setting up and using a stay-wet palette to support smooth, controlled painting.

Session 3: Colour mixing

Dive deeper into colour theory, learn how to create new vibrant colours and how to avoid muddy colours. Practice mixing tints, tones, and shades. You’ll create a colour chart you can use throughout the course.

Session 4: Painting techniques

Learn foundational techniques such as blending, layering, brush control, and simple mark-making to help you build confidence and create expressive, vibrant artworks from the very start.

Session 4: Creating Shapes, Forms & Simple Still Life

Learn how to block in shapes, build form using light and shadow, and begin a simple still-life study. Focus on observation skills and developing structure in your painting.

Session 5: Building Layers & Texture

Experiment with layering methods, and textural techniques unique to acrylics. Start developing more depth and interest in your work as you build on previous skills.

Session 6: Finishing Touches & Group Showcase

Add final details, refine your artwork, and learn basic varnishing and presentation tips. The course ends with a relaxed group showcase to celebrate everyone’s progress.