Back to basics: A practical guide to oil painting

Return to the foundations of painting in this new practical series designed for artists, art historians, curators and anyone curious about how paintings are made.

‘Back to basics’ offers hands-on insight into the traditional materials and processes that have shaped painting for centuries, from preparing grounds and stretching canvas to grinding pigments, making egg tempera and mixing oil paint from scratch.

Through demonstration and practice, you’ll develop a deeper mastery of the physical properties that define a work of art, and how artists have manipulated these elements to achieve different effects. Each session focuses on a different process and can be taken individually or as part of the full series.

In this one-day studio course, artist Jo Conybeare guides you through the fundamentals of oil painting. Oil paintings are a main feature of the National Gallery Collection, but how were they actually made? What goes into oil paint, how does it behave on the surface, and how do choices around pigments, oils and grounds affect colour, texture and drying time?

Through step-by-step demonstrations, hands-on experiments and close looking at paintings in the Gallery, you’ll explore how oil paint is prepared, modified and applied. By mixing and using oil paint yourself, you’ll learn about pigments and binders, different oils and mediums, surface preparation, oil’s flexibility, depth and, crucially, dry time. Seeing the ways artists have built up paint through layering, blending and mark-making, and studying selected works in the National Gallery Collection, you will develop as an artist learning how to exploit these qualities to powerful effect.

This course is open to everyone, including those who simply want to ‘get their hands dirty’ and better understand the medium.

All materials are provided alongside handouts with extra resources. The session takes place onsite in our state-of-the-art Clore Art Studio in our Roden Centre for Creative Learning.

Joanna Conybeare is an artist and Gallery Educator at the National Gallery. She has led multiple adult courses and has worked in Primary and Secondary schools in London and the south coast as a teacher and subject lead for Art and Design. In her own artistic practice, she uses oil paint, clay, porcelain and terracotta to explore the figure, enjoying the immediacy of the material that enables her to ‘draw’ two and three-dimensionally.