The first session of the new oil painting class given by Jamie Bollenback and held at Artists and craftsman supply in their awesome classroom space. This is really the best place to learn about art. Great people, wonderful staff, fresh coffee and a whole store of art supplies to pick from.

This first class didn’t have much painting, it was all about the materials and if you know anything about oils, you know that you don’t know anything about oils. Or, at least you know that tip of the iceberg that is oil painting. Aaron, one of the A&C staff, commented as I was leaving that “you could spend a lifetime on the chemistry of oil paint alone”, and he’s right. So we spent most of the time going over the different materials and processes for oil painting. No matter how much I think I know about this, I always learn something new.
After the long discussion on materials Jamie setup a skull for us to paint from. We only had thirty minutes to paint, which is more than enough for the reductive method of painting. I have to say I’m loving reductive painting more and more every time I do it. I think I’m going to bring my oil paints to the figure class tomorrow and bust out some reductive work with a figure.