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Adventures in Pictorial Space (Online Course) Fall 2026 w/ David Holt
October 4 to October 25 (Sundays), 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Eastern Time
**All sessions are live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. All recordings will be available to students for 3 months after the final session, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.
Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite. Our business hours are 10:00 AM through 5:00 PM. All course information and email correspondence will be sent during business hours. If students purchase a course, workshop, demo or recording outside business hours or during the weekend the course information or recording will be sent the following business day.
DEMO: https://youtu.be/w5U4yOsSXDo
Course Description
In this online studio course we will explore some exciting new ways to think about space in painting. We’ll examine works from a wide range of historical periods and cultures to expand our understanding of pictorial space beyond Western perspective. We’ll also consider concepts from psychology, vision science, anthropology, semiotics, and philosophy. Throughout, we’ll see how ways of understanding visual depictions are culturally contingent and depend on learned clues and strategies (there is no “innocent eye”). The course will have relevant applications for both figurative and abstract painting and other work in two-dimensional media.
Each weekly session will focus on different types of pictorial space and include slide presentations and demonstrations accompanied by practical exercises, instruction, and feedback on work done during and between the sessions. You may work in any two-dimensional media.* Extensive resources will include slideshows, bibliographies, journal articles, and links to videos, websites, and other information.
*(I am happy to provide lists of suggested materials for oil, acrylic, or watercolour/gouache media, as well as for drawing media if requested.)
Course Outline
Week 1 - Space, Time, and Narrative in Ancient Art
We will consider some of the many functions and locations of early painted images---on walls, ceilings, floors, scrolls, and vases, to name just a few, and how viewers were meant to physically see and understand those images. We will investigate space and time relationships in ancient art as both artistically motivated and the result of narrative, ritual, or other concerns. The development of early representational schema in tribal arts and children’s drawings will also be studied, particularly in connection with Modernism’s interest in painting’s basic elements.
Topics and issues
Prehistoric and Indigenous art; Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Mediterranean, and Asian temple, funerary, and palace reliefs; vase painting; “primitivism” in modern art; approaches to vision, representation, and meaning in phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and semiotics.
Week 2 - Painting in Architecture, Architecture in Painting
Perspective systems and other spatial conventions will be compared by examining architecture’s role as both physical site and subject for painting. Decorative and illusionistic approaches to mural, ceiling, and pavement ornamentation will be explored and architectural depictions, especially as settings for painted figures and narratives, will be discussed in a variety of Western and Eastern paintings, including theatre scenography, manuscript illustrations, and Asian scrolls and screens.
Topics and issues
Ornamental and illusionistic architectural motifs in religious and domestic structures; architecture in narrative painting; perspective systems in Roman to Baroque era painting, Asian painting, and Persian, Ottoman, and Indian (Mughal) miniatures.
Week 3 - Interior Worlds
We will see how interior spaces afford unique possibilities for spatially complex paintings, especially when the interiors include multiple images or features such as windows, mirrors, doors, or other spatial openings. We’ll include a special focus on paintings of artists’ studios as part of our exploration. Examples from a variety of historical and cultural traditions will be included.
Topics and issues
17c Dutch interiors; collectors’ galleries; Asian scholars’ and painters’ studios; studio paintings by Turner, Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Dufy, De Chirico, Guston, and others.
Week 4 -Still Life: Objects In/as Space
We will explore still life as an especially adaptable subject for spatial experimentation in both Western and Eastern painting. We will pay special attention to tactility and the use of painting materials in examples of trompe l’oeil and naturalistic representation, abstraction, collage, and relief assemblage. Compositions with a variety of still life subjects and meanings will be explored, including food and tableware, hunting, flowers, and other motifs.
Topics and issues
European, American, and Asian still life traditions; scale and painting techniques; still life subjects and themes; trompe l’oeil; Braque and Picasso and the influence of Cubist still life painting; de Heem, Kalf, Ruysch, Oudry, Chardin, Vallayer-Coster, Manet, Cezanne, Matisse, Morandi, Hitchins, Scott, Peto, Zhu Xinjian, Qi Baishi, and others.
Course Materials
Participants in this workshop are free to work in drawing and painting media of their choice since the workshop is focused on exercises and strategies rather than any particular painting or drawing techniques.
Painting materials
Here are three suggestions for limited colour palettes for oil or acrylic paints:
1) 5 colours [vibrant] (white, black, and primaries to approximate CMYK palette. Some manufacturers have basic yellow, red, and blue primaries.) Titanium white, cadmium yellow light or lemon yellow, cadmium red deep or alizarin crimson, pthalo blue, mars or ivory black.
2) 5 colours [muted] earth based colours--titanium white, yellow ochre, Venetian or Indian red, and pthalo, ultramarine, or cobalt blue; mars black.
3) 10 colours [these will allow for matching nearly any colour you may encounter in painting from observation]-- titanium white, cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, cadmium red light, Indian red or Venetian red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, pthalo green, ivory or mars black.
Watercolour or gouache colour palettes may use the same colours as above, with Chinese white and Payne’s grey for white and black. Readymade sets of tubes or pans (e.g. eight colours) will also be fine.
Solvents, mediums, additives, etc.
-For acrylics and alkyds or other water-based oil paints, only water is needed.
-For regular oil paint one may wish to use small amounts of a simple medium (e.g. stand oil/Gamsol) and non-toxic solvent for clean-up.
Supports
Participants may wish to work on stretched canvas, canvas panels, unstretched canvas, wooden panels, paper or other appropriate support (e.g. primed canvas for painting as needed for oils or acrylics). All water-based media may be used on unprepared paper of sufficient weight (e.g. watercolour paper).
Brushes
A handful of brushes of different sizes appropriate to the chosen media and scale of works will be needed. Be advised, it is always better to work with the largest brushes possible as a way of focusing attention on the relationships of large tonal areas and shapes rather than on detail, at least until the final stages of painting.
Palettes
-for oil paint: disposable paper, wood, glass, plexi, etc.
-for acrylics: disposable paper or other hard surface (even regular cardboard scraps can work well)
-for watercolour or gouache: plastic or other palettes with indented areas of sufficient sizes for mixing colours
2—Drawing materials
All participants will need sketchbooks or other drawing paper to make drawings, notes, and studies. Softer grades of pencils (e.g. 4B, 6B), charcoal, conté, and/or pastels will allow for working with larger tonal areas in developing compositions.
-Wet media (e.g. pen/brush with ink wash) can also be used
-All drawing media will be supported. A variety of white and toned drawing papers will afford some variety and flexibility.
3—Other general supplies
-portable pocket mirror or other mirror to see your work in progress in reverse -paper towels, erasers, drawing boards, clips, palette knives, masking tape, non-toxic fixatives, etc. as needed
-containers for water and/or solvents as needed
October 4 to October 25 (Sundays), 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Eastern Time
**All sessions are live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. All recordings will be available to students for 3 months after the final session, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.
Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite. Our business hours are 10:00 AM through 5:00 PM. All course information and email correspondence will be sent during business hours. If students purchase a course, workshop, demo or recording outside business hours or during the weekend the course information or recording will be sent the following business day.
DEMO: https://youtu.be/w5U4yOsSXDo
Course Description
In this online studio course we will explore some exciting new ways to think about space in painting. We’ll examine works from a wide range of historical periods and cultures to expand our understanding of pictorial space beyond Western perspective. We’ll also consider concepts from psychology, vision science, anthropology, semiotics, and philosophy. Throughout, we’ll see how ways of understanding visual depictions are culturally contingent and depend on learned clues and strategies (there is no “innocent eye”). The course will have relevant applications for both figurative and abstract painting and other work in two-dimensional media.
Each weekly session will focus on different types of pictorial space and include slide presentations and demonstrations accompanied by practical exercises, instruction, and feedback on work done during and between the sessions. You may work in any two-dimensional media.* Extensive resources will include slideshows, bibliographies, journal articles, and links to videos, websites, and other information.
*(I am happy to provide lists of suggested materials for oil, acrylic, or watercolour/gouache media, as well as for drawing media if requested.)
Course Outline
Week 1 - Space, Time, and Narrative in Ancient Art
We will consider some of the many functions and locations of early painted images---on walls, ceilings, floors, scrolls, and vases, to name just a few, and how viewers were meant to physically see and understand those images. We will investigate space and time relationships in ancient art as both artistically motivated and the result of narrative, ritual, or other concerns. The development of early representational schema in tribal arts and children’s drawings will also be studied, particularly in connection with Modernism’s interest in painting’s basic elements.
Topics and issues
Prehistoric and Indigenous art; Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Mediterranean, and Asian temple, funerary, and palace reliefs; vase painting; “primitivism” in modern art; approaches to vision, representation, and meaning in phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and semiotics.
Week 2 - Painting in Architecture, Architecture in Painting
Perspective systems and other spatial conventions will be compared by examining architecture’s role as both physical site and subject for painting. Decorative and illusionistic approaches to mural, ceiling, and pavement ornamentation will be explored and architectural depictions, especially as settings for painted figures and narratives, will be discussed in a variety of Western and Eastern paintings, including theatre scenography, manuscript illustrations, and Asian scrolls and screens.
Topics and issues
Ornamental and illusionistic architectural motifs in religious and domestic structures; architecture in narrative painting; perspective systems in Roman to Baroque era painting, Asian painting, and Persian, Ottoman, and Indian (Mughal) miniatures.
Week 3 - Interior Worlds
We will see how interior spaces afford unique possibilities for spatially complex paintings, especially when the interiors include multiple images or features such as windows, mirrors, doors, or other spatial openings. We’ll include a special focus on paintings of artists’ studios as part of our exploration. Examples from a variety of historical and cultural traditions will be included.
Topics and issues
17c Dutch interiors; collectors’ galleries; Asian scholars’ and painters’ studios; studio paintings by Turner, Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Dufy, De Chirico, Guston, and others.
Week 4 -Still Life: Objects In/as Space
We will explore still life as an especially adaptable subject for spatial experimentation in both Western and Eastern painting. We will pay special attention to tactility and the use of painting materials in examples of trompe l’oeil and naturalistic representation, abstraction, collage, and relief assemblage. Compositions with a variety of still life subjects and meanings will be explored, including food and tableware, hunting, flowers, and other motifs.
Topics and issues
European, American, and Asian still life traditions; scale and painting techniques; still life subjects and themes; trompe l’oeil; Braque and Picasso and the influence of Cubist still life painting; de Heem, Kalf, Ruysch, Oudry, Chardin, Vallayer-Coster, Manet, Cezanne, Matisse, Morandi, Hitchins, Scott, Peto, Zhu Xinjian, Qi Baishi, and others.
Course Materials
Participants in this workshop are free to work in drawing and painting media of their choice since the workshop is focused on exercises and strategies rather than any particular painting or drawing techniques.
Painting materials
Here are three suggestions for limited colour palettes for oil or acrylic paints:
1) 5 colours [vibrant] (white, black, and primaries to approximate CMYK palette. Some manufacturers have basic yellow, red, and blue primaries.) Titanium white, cadmium yellow light or lemon yellow, cadmium red deep or alizarin crimson, pthalo blue, mars or ivory black.
2) 5 colours [muted] earth based colours--titanium white, yellow ochre, Venetian or Indian red, and pthalo, ultramarine, or cobalt blue; mars black.
3) 10 colours [these will allow for matching nearly any colour you may encounter in painting from observation]-- titanium white, cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, cadmium red light, Indian red or Venetian red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, pthalo blue, pthalo green, ivory or mars black.
Watercolour or gouache colour palettes may use the same colours as above, with Chinese white and Payne’s grey for white and black. Readymade sets of tubes or pans (e.g. eight colours) will also be fine.
Solvents, mediums, additives, etc.
-For acrylics and alkyds or other water-based oil paints, only water is needed.
-For regular oil paint one may wish to use small amounts of a simple medium (e.g. stand oil/Gamsol) and non-toxic solvent for clean-up.
Supports
Participants may wish to work on stretched canvas, canvas panels, unstretched canvas, wooden panels, paper or other appropriate support (e.g. primed canvas for painting as needed for oils or acrylics). All water-based media may be used on unprepared paper of sufficient weight (e.g. watercolour paper).
Brushes
A handful of brushes of different sizes appropriate to the chosen media and scale of works will be needed. Be advised, it is always better to work with the largest brushes possible as a way of focusing attention on the relationships of large tonal areas and shapes rather than on detail, at least until the final stages of painting.
Palettes
-for oil paint: disposable paper, wood, glass, plexi, etc.
-for acrylics: disposable paper or other hard surface (even regular cardboard scraps can work well)
-for watercolour or gouache: plastic or other palettes with indented areas of sufficient sizes for mixing colours
2—Drawing materials
All participants will need sketchbooks or other drawing paper to make drawings, notes, and studies. Softer grades of pencils (e.g. 4B, 6B), charcoal, conté, and/or pastels will allow for working with larger tonal areas in developing compositions.
-Wet media (e.g. pen/brush with ink wash) can also be used
-All drawing media will be supported. A variety of white and toned drawing papers will afford some variety and flexibility.
3—Other general supplies
-portable pocket mirror or other mirror to see your work in progress in reverse -paper towels, erasers, drawing boards, clips, palette knives, masking tape, non-toxic fixatives, etc. as needed
-containers for water and/or solvents as needed