Guidelines & Information for Art Tuition Beginners WELCOME
No Talent Needed.
Initially it is your teacher who requires the talent.
Kathy Shell is an award winning artist and author of  multi mediums and subjects with over 50 years professional painting experience.  All she requires of her students initially is the desire to learn from a teacher who will demonstrate how and explain why and constructively critique your own work. 
Kathy does not waste your time or money by giving hobby classes. 
Kathy Shell teaches because she LOVES to teach people who want to learn. These are not classes for those who are just seeking a social gathering to paint in with just a little assistance.  This is the right way to learn if you are eager for 'more,' than a hobby class.  Your work will develop steadily as you learn in an environment that nurtures the artist in you.   Kathy Shell is herself an active successful, author artist.
LIMITED VACANCIES Exist and bookings can not always being accepted.
Tuition Enrollment: As students book private or semi-private lessons, demonstration tutorial classes are at flexible class times and may be arranged on an individual basis between student and Kathy Shell, your tutor.  Fee is payable on booking.

See Detalis here ;- Private & Semi-Private Lessons

Private & Semi-Private Lessons

As I have a comment, asking where the poster can get lessons on monochromatic painting using other colours, I have put a link to a book on the subject of Monochromatic painting. It is not usual to use other colours than those I have demonstrated with.

An all blue, all purple, all red, etc paining can be very wearying on the eye in my opinion but by all means try it. All you have to do is substitute for another colour from those i demonstrate with and understand the need to mute some of those colours and not use them in their full colour intensity.  Badly handes using strong colour and I think you would come up with vulgar, not art,

Monochromatic Painting in tones of yellow.

Oil Paints used were,

Titanium White

Cadmium yellow light

Yellow Ochre

Raw Sienna

Raw Umber

Black

Five tones were premixed

Light being mostly Titanium white with the barest hint of yellow

Yellow Ochre and a little white to produce a medium light tone.

Raw Sienna and a small amount of white and Raw Umber and a little more white to produce a mid tone.

Raw Umber used alone as the med dark tone

Raw Umber and black, to produce a dark tone.

Painting was broken down into its four stages.

1/Plan

 Our subject a tree at the entrance to Brachina Gorge, Flinders Ranges, South Australia, as taken from the print by Kathy Shell of this work WITH the permission of the artist for the purpose of this class to copy it. Note; Do not copy artists work without permission as that is breaking copyright.

The decision was made to paint in tonal impressionist style using tones of yellow.

2/ Block in. 

As with the previous light and shade lessons completed in black and white and tones of grey we began by working from light to dark until the basic block in was completed.

Painting as loose as we could, with as big a brush, as we could for as long as we could and resisting the urge to detail at this stage.  Once the block in was complete a coffee break was taken in the garden where we looked at the works of skilled tonal impressionist artists and looked at and talked about nature.

3/ Refine. 

I explained that when we paint landscapes on location the refining might include removing mosquitoes, dirt, and grass seeds from the work.   In the case of in studio work it is mostly picking up errors obvious once a break from the work has been taken and filling in missed parts of the canvas.

4/ Detail. 

Drawing the foreground or the focal point of the painting into sharper focus by increasing the contrast of light and shade in this area from the less in focus, distance.   Remembering that you do not have to place every branch every leaf, in the work just capture the essence of the subject you are painting and know when to stop. 

This was a 2 and a half hour beginner’s oil painting lesson.

 

In the nineteen forties Max Meldrum wrote the book “Science of Appearances”. That book has now been out of print for half a century and is a valuable collector’s item.  Max Meldrum taught one of Australia’s later leading tonal painters, Alan Martin.  Alan Martin taught me tonal impressionism.  It is this same tonal impressionist technique that I am now teaching.

To paint you must first be able to see things as they are.  This is not an automatic process as people discover when they first pick up a pencil and draw and discover the drawing is out of proportion and perspective.  Learning to see things your mind believes to be black or white as a pattern of light and dark, and that there will be areas within the part your mind believes to be white that can be darker than the part your mind knows to be black is a mind awakening.  What you wake up to with the aid of a skilled tonal impressionist tutor is that you have been seeing what your mind has been telling you. You actually need to be taught how to see things the way your eyes are actually seeing them without applying the distortions that come from within your mind.

What I do when I take a beginner student, is I teach them how to see things as they actually are without the mind altering or distorting that image.  This can be an exciting revelation.   It is a skill or science that can be taught, demonstrated and with practice, with a lifetime of practice, it can be developed.

By returning to teach, just one student I am teaching myself again the very fundamentals of how to see things as they are and not as my brain says they are.

The hand was painted as a class demonstration in less than 2 hours, as lesson 4 in tonal impressionism oil painting. My student repeated the same painting of the hand.

Private & Semi-Private Lessons 
 

Not sure that the teacher is supposed to enjoy taking the class as much as I am.  I have a great beginner student and today the third painting lesson she took, was a challenging subject, still focusing on seeing the shape and the tone of things.

I was very pleased with how the lesson went.

The inspiration for the art lesson was from a plaiting by Henri Mattise

I broke the painting down into it's four stages.

1/ The Plan ` This included pre mixing the 5 tones we would be painting with
Dark, Medium Dark, Mid tone, Medium light and light tone, progressing in that order.

2/ The rough Block in.
Working with large brushes, in loose confident brush strokes we worked as loose as we could for as long as we could.

3. Refining.
A great deal of measuring and checking of our proportions and corrective actions took place during this time. We also watched a video of a professional portrait artist at work and showed how even the master artists make corrections as they go along.

4/ last of all a few details go in.  This is always the last touches.

Reg made us coffee and brought it out to us in the garden where I did a light and shade art work of a block in of a camellia as a demonstration.

Private & Semi-Private Lessons

I am enjoy teaching art in my Mooroopna art studio. I have taught art from my home studios for over 25 years.  

Feel welcome to view my  Private & Semi-Private Lessons information.

I had two lovely ladies arrive at my studio door at 2pm in the afternoon and I was still in my dressing gown.

I prefer people to call by appointment, I have been writing a novel and sometimes when the words flow i write into the wee hours then sleep in.  That is how creative people often work. 
 

I was delighted to have my studio open to show them with its own front door and I do not need to bring people through the house to talk studio business.
 

The studio was a double garage, built into the house now and a new carport created in front of this former garage, something that many artists could try for an inexpensive extra-large studio room if they do not need a large covered in car space.
 

I must stop writing into the wee hours of the night and get back to the regular hours most people work to so I am dressed next time these ladies call.


Private & Semi-Private Lessons