Fundamentals of Oil Painting with Paulus Kooij - a Weekend Workshop

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This weekend foundation course is built for total beginners and for anyone who has dabbled in oils but never had the fundamentals properly explained. 

MEMBER: $90

NON-MEMBER: $110

About the Course

Oil paint has shaped Western painting for six hundred years — from the Van Eyck workshops of 15th-century Flanders through Rembrandt, Sargent, and every serious painter since — because no other medium gives you as much time to think while you work. It stays wet, it blends on the canvas rather than only on the palette, and it forgives revision in a way that rewards patience over speed.

This is a beginner’s course, run over two full days, for anyone who has never picked up a brush or wants to properly rebuild their fundamentals. No experience required. Across the two days you'll build the complete toolkit — materials, colour mixing, value, and paint handling — and finish with a painting of your own, worked from observation, start to finish.

One note for anyone hesitant about oil painting because of the fumes: that reputation belongs to traditional solvents like turpentine. The paints selected are free of toxic metals.  This course teaches a solvent-free approach — brushes are cleaned in walnut or safflower oil rather than any harsh solvent — so there's no toxic smell in the room and no special ventilation to worry about. If solvents have kept you away from oils until now, this is the way in.

What you will learn

Day One — Foundations

• Materials: brushes, mediums, supports, and a rationalised starter palette

• Paint handling — how oil behaves differently from any medium you may have used before

• Colour mixing: building an accurate colour and value from a limited palette

• Value and form, applied directly in paint rather than pencil

• Working methodically from block-in through to first full layer of colour

Day Two — Painting from Observation

• Building a painting in stages: underpainting, block-in, refinement

• Edge control and brushwork — where to hold detail and where to let paint stay loose

• Reading light and shadow on a real subject, and translating it into paint

• A full painting session from a still-life, start to finish

Materials List

Bring your own oil paints, a basic set would suffice with the following student quality colours:

• Titanium white

• Cadmium Yellow hue

• Cadmium Red hue,

• Alizarin Crimson

• Ultramarine Blue

• Burned Sienna

Other Basics

• A set of hog hair brushes

• 2 canvas panels A3 or A4 size

• Palette,

• Rags

• Metal cup or mug

Oil mediums will be made available by the tutor.

About Paulus

Paulus Kooij is a Sunshine Coast-based visual artist working across watercolour, oil, acrylic, pastel, pencil, and plaster sculpture. A retired industrial chemist and project manager, Paulus brings a precise, technically grounded approach to teaching — breaking painting down into principles that genuinely explain why a technique works, not just how to copy it. He teaches watercolour and other media through local groups and gallery-based courses, and is known for hands-on, demonstration-led classes where questions are always welcome.

Tea and coffee will be provided. Please BYO lunch.

create@noosaartsandcrafts.org.au

(07) 5474 1211