Plein Air Painting in Oils with Byron Copland

This course is appropriate for all levels, a perfect introduction and opportunity for those beginning or those thinking of beginning their foray into painting outdoors and a platform for more experienced plein air painters to advance their skills and understanding through personalised critique and teacher demonstrations.

We will be exploring the picturesque parks like Carlton and Fitzroy gardens that are in close proximity to The Victorian Artists Society and the Architecture of their surrounds.
The term begins with shorter oil sketches and an emphasis on capturing light effects in the simplest of terms, proceeding to longer format paintings as we advance. In this manner a students compositional skills, understanding of perspective and perceptual abilities relating to drawing and colour are advanced very efficiently. These more rapid colour studies have been utilised by landscape painters throughout history as a means of training the eye, to further their understanding of light, landscape and atmosphere and as the basis for larger paintings often executed in the studio.

Now, armed with a solid basis of fundamental skills, spending more time on a painting and creating focus through detail is not so overwhelming and is not a new hurdle but an extension of the challenges faced in our earlier studies. The transient nature of outdoor light being our main encumbrance, we will address tactics and best practices concerning longer session and multi-day plein air paintings.

It is the focus of this course to train ones ability to see colour in context. Nothing can be extracted from our visual plane without impacting it’s surrounds, everything is in relationship with everything else and can only be viewed as such if one hopes to make an honest assessment. All parts relate to the whole, in form and colour.