Are you ready for deeper story telling and meaning in your art?  Do you struggle to get your ideas out of your head and onto canvas?  Discover how to unleash your imagination, let go, and confidently make work that tells your unique story.

Armed with a sketchbook, you will wander around St Ives gathering visual source material to use over the rest of the course. This experience acclimatises you to your creative context; elevating you above distraction and self-critique so that you can see clearly what resonates with you. This could be the minutiae of sand and stones on the beach, the sweeping swathes of Cornish landscape or figures bundled against the breeze. You will begin to comprehend the story your sketchbook is telling you of your viewpoint on the world, building your creative confidence and recognising the potential of your own distinct creative voice.

Back in the studio, your tutor, artist Ilker Cinarel, will guide you through applying process to your sketches. Begin by examining them for recurring themes and motifs that offer visual clues into how you frame the world around you. Ilker will explain the more formal considerations of painting, such as form, structure and composition, as well as offer his seasoned approach to working with acrylics. He will then lead you in a liberating collage exercise, sparking inspiration to transform your sketches into narratives of your individual response to place. You’ll combine these with representations of your own experience to work on a painting that tells the story of your unique viewpoint, weaving together your observation with other more personal elements.

What will I learn?

1. Confidence in trusting yourself when collecting source material and recognising recurring styles and motifs that emerge from it.
2. A straightforward method of using collage to build narrative in your paintings.
3. Learn skills to enable you to tell the story that is unique to you.
4. Technical guidance on the formal structure of painting such as composition and form.
5. Confidence in using acrylic paints.
6. An understanding of ways to layer observational landscape with more personal symbolism.

Who would this course suit?

This course is open to painters of all levels – from beginners to those with more experience. It would benefit those that want to build more personal narrative into their painting and would like insight on how this could be possible. It offers you a useful window of introspection, so if you find it tricky to see things clearly on your own, this course can help.

What to Bring

Timings and Breaks

The first day starts at 9.30 am and finishes at 4 pm. Please arrive ten to fifteen minutes before the start time

All course days after that start at 9.15am and finish at 3.45 pm and there will be an hour for lunch. Occasionally these times may be changed if required by the tutor. There are plenty of nearby places to eat and we will serve tea and fresh ground coffee at break times during the day.