Learning to See with Oil Paint at Great Ayton Art Club

Last night at Great Ayton Art Club we continued our introduction to oil painting, this time turning our attention to the stems, water and glass vase.

We focused on values and tones, looking carefully at how to mix colours that work harmoniously together. One of the principles we keep returning to in our adult art classes is training our brains to paint what is actually there, rather than what we assume or know is there.

You don't really need to know how to "paint glass". In fact, thinking about painting a glass vase can make the whole thing feel much more complicated than it needs to be. When you really look, the glass is simply a collection of reflections, shapes, highlights and areas of surrounding colour appearing through it.

So we approached the vase in exactly the same way we approached the flower petals last week. We looked for shapes, decided whether they were light, mid or dark in tone, and mixed our colours accordingly.

It's about learning to see beyond the object itself. Once you stop thinking "I'm painting a glass vase" and start thinking "I'm painting this shape, in this tone, in this position", the process becomes much less daunting.

Another lovely evening of oil painting at Great Ayton Art Club, building confidence and developing skills that can be applied to so many different subjects. Our regular Great Ayton art classes are designed to introduce different materials and techniques while giving everyone the space to experiment, learn and develop their own way of working.