Drawing and Painting Still Life - Southwell Library - Adult Learning

Drawing and Painting Still Life course offers a structured and creative exploration of still life through both drawing and painting.

Ideal for beginners and improvers, it will guide you through essential techniques while encouraging your own creative expression.

You’ll work from real objects and carefully arranged compositions, learning how to observe form, shape, light, and texture. Each week builds on core skills, from line drawing and tonal shading to colour mixing and composition in paint. You'll experiment with pencil, charcoal, and acrylics, gaining confidence in translating what you see into expressive and visually engaging artwork. The course blends demonstrations, guided practice, and individual support to help you develop both technical skills and a personal style.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Produce a series of at least three still life studies in both drawing and painting media, showing development in composition and observation.

• Accurately draw simple objects from observation, demonstrating understanding of proportion and basic perspective.

• Apply at least two shading techniques to represent light and shadow in a pencil or charcoal drawing.

• Mix and apply a minimum of six colours using acrylic paint to represent realistic or expressive colour in a still life composition.

• Design a balanced still life composition, considering shape, space, and focal points, and complete it as a final artwork.

• Develop and implement a marketing plan using at least 3 different channels (e.g., social media, email marketing, and local events) to promote their products.

What you will need to bring to the course:

• Acrylic paper/sketch pad

• A4 canvas

• white gesso

• a range of synthetic paint brushes

• graphite pencils (2B, 4B, 6B)

• acrylic paint (student grade):

- Red (Magenta, Cadmium Red

- Yellow (Lemon and Cadmiun Yellow)

- Blue (Ultramarine, and Cerulean)

- Titanium white