Quiet Paintings: Still Life in Oils (Online Course) Winter 2027 w/ Clare Haward

January 13 to February 10 (Wednesdays), 10:00 AM to 12:30 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.

Course Description

A five week online painting course that will introduce students to ‘quiet compositions’ that balance gentle forms, muted tones and controlled colour. Through a series of exercises, students will explore an approach to painting from still life that encourages slow observation of the set up, discovery of the abstract qualities of the composition and careful consideration of core elements such as tone, temperature and colour relationships. Students will make direct studies from your own still life set up, and we will take inspiration from artists such as Giorgio Morandi and Chardin.

Course Outline

Week 1

Introduction to my work and influences.

Demonstration and Exercises:

Selection and arrangement of still life objects.

Mixing greys and neutrals with a limited palette, considering tonal scale and compression.

Week 2

Introduction to Slow Looking.

Demonstration and Exercises:

Monochrome exercise in oil focussing on observing shape, tonal relationships and quality of edge between two or three objects. Advanced students will be encouraged to mixed chromatic neutrals and consider temperature.

Week 3

Composing the ‘Quiet’ Still Life.

Demonstration and Exercises:

Placement of objects within a composition, giving consideration to shape, pacing, contrast, relationships between forms and pictorial depth.

Exercise in oil with a focus on simplifying forms and unvelling the underlying abstraction within the composition. Students will work in monochrome or a limited colour palette to consider tone and temperature.

Week 4

Observing the Still Life.

Demonstration and Exercises.

How to encourage slow looking in the viewer? We will consider how to extract information from our still life set ups to compose paintings with unity, harmony and balance.

Building on session 3, students will begin a two-session painting that questions what to leave in and what to leave out. We will consider how to simplify, generalise and create rhythm with tone, colour, line and edge.

Week 5

Slow Looking at Paintings - Consolidation and Critique.

Demonstration and Exercise.

Students will continue to develop their painting, and we will end with a review of your work, encouraging slow looking and critique.

Course Materials List

Basic Colour Palette:

Titanium White (or Warm White/Flake White)

Yellow Ochre or Raw Sienna

Raw Umber or Burnt Umber

Ultramarine Blue

Burnt Sienna

Additional Colours (optional)

Alizarin Crimson or Rose Madder

Cadmium Red

Cadmium Yellow

Veridian or Pthalo Green

Prussian Blue or Pthalo Blue 

Synthetic or Hog Brushes (size 6-10 range of brushes)

Soft Round Brushes (size 2-4) (optional)/Primed/Gessoed Board/Oil Painting Paper

Palette (ideally not paper palette)

Linseed Oil or Painting Medium

Rags

Palette Knife

Solvent

Linseed Oil/Liquin

Rags