History: Introduction to the Materials and Techniques of Painting and Drawing

This course will allow you to linger over glorious works like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and the astounding mosaics in Ravenna and consider how and in what ways they were made.

We will discuss key works of art by well-known artists, such as the panel paintings in tempera by Duccio, the early use of oil paint by Jan van Eyck and we will compare them with later examples by Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh.

More recent techniques will be explored, such as the use of acrylic paint by David Hockney and screen printing by Andy Warhol. These will help you discover how the materials and techniques these artists used affected the work they created.

There is so much to see when you get under the surface of a painting or a fresco, so many layers and so many different techniques to discover, also some key theories you might find of interest, like colour theory and how, for example this theory influenced specific artists’ work.