How I designed my oil painting course with the beginner in mind

In this post I want to discuss how I designed my itty bitty Intro to Oil Painting Course with the absolute beginner in mind!

This course is designed from the ground up. There is no other course out there like it.

Why? Because … there’s just no nice way to say this… I think the traditional way to learn oil painting courses is flawed. (Gasp!) And I thought I could do better. Let me explain.

First, I think they have way too much theory up front. And then they make you do some really unappealing exercises that squelch your enthusiasm.

When I started painting, I did not want to paint cones, pyramids, and spheres in ugly colours. The colour theory lectures went way over my head. And I thought making colour charts looked like punishment (still do).

I was also a late bloomer! I was in my 50s and I didn’t want to waste time doing things that didn’t inspire me. I wanted to paint beautiful things. And keeping me from doing that was like a type of like torture.

“Hell,” I thought. “I’m 54. I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to. What are they going to do — send me to the principal’s office? ”

So I ditched the traditional method and set off on my own course.

I learned to teach at a world-class Science Centre

I wasn’t exactly a neophyte when it came to learning. I had studied some really cool artistic practices like improv comedy, clowning, theatre, filmmaking and writing.

I also had a Fine Art History degree, and I had learned to teach science when I worked at the Ontario Science Centre. If I could teach science in a fun way, surely I could teach art in a fun way.

First things first… capitalize on my excitement!

I followed my heart’s desire

This is the principle I learned from clown school. (Yes, I studied stage clown – it’s a form of masked theatre! And I love it. Think Charlie Chaplin or Lucille Ball)

In clown school, we trained to understand what was an idea (coming from our heads), and what were our actual feelings about things (coming from our heart).

During classes and exercises, it quickly became clear that the stuff that came from the heart was just so much more interesting and truthful than the head stuff. This is what makes the clown so appealing — they act innocently without a filter — no self-censoring, and thus remind us of our shared humanity.

Another way to think about it is we were trained to acknowledge, trust and follow our impulses. And this led to the most fascinating theatrical scenes.

And so it is with that in mind that I decided to veer off the traditional painting path just a bit. I decided to follow my passion, excitement and curiosity —  I followed my heart — not my head. I dove right in and battled, played and experimented my heart out.

It was probably the most FUN two years I’d had in my whole life.

I spent many hours happily pushing and pulling the paint around until it made shapes that appealed to me. I spent hours in arts stores, poring over the supplies, wanting to learn what everything was for. And I went to bed with my computer, doing endless searches on Pinterest for oil painting techniques, and saving all my favourite artwork and artists into tons of boards.

And it worked. In two and a half years, my work was showing in 3 of Newfoundland’s top art galleries and I was also featured in some wonderful arts and culture mags. I was also starting to sell to collectors worldwide.

That’s the power of small steps! More on that later.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The shapes exercise is probably useful. It teaches you all about light, shadow, and reflected light. But is reflected light really the thing a beginner needs to learn? On Day 1?? Really?

Nope, I don’t think so. It’s a pretty advanced subject. It’s the kind of stuff intermediate painters should work on. Not beginners.

Beginners aren’t interested in shadows! Beginner painters can’t even SEE shadows yet.

A great example of this is the film “Maud Lewis: A World Without Shadows”. It’s a short film about Canadian painter Maud Adams, a naive painter.

Naive painters do not know the principles of art — they are completely untrained. They paint for the pure joy of it — and that makes their work super charming.

How beginners see

When beginners start painting, they are focused on capturing the likeness of their subject . They want their painting to look like that which they are seeing. They will usually start with the main object, paint the outlines of the subject, and ignore the background completely. They also usually ignore the shadows.

After a while, as a painter progresses, they start noticing that their paintings aren’t realistic. They wonder why.

The answer is usually that they are too “flat.” They look too 2D and not 3D.

This is when a novice should start looking at shadows! Shadows are important for creating form and the illusion of depth. This is when painters should do the ugly cone exercise … maybe. I still haven’t done it yet! I will let you know.

But when starting out, I fully believe beginners need to just get into the paint and start playing with it. They need to ride that waves of enthusiasm, and that unbridled curiosity as far as it will take them. They need to explore freely.

We learn best when playing

Doesn’t matter whether you are a child or an adult. When we are driven by our curiosity, we will LOVE learning.

And when we love learning, we will want to practice. And the more we practice, the better we will get.

Because — get this — as it turns out, the most important thing when it comes to achieving mastery — is quantity!

Yes. Just plain old quality.

The way to get better at painting, is to paint a lot. This is how we will work out the problems.

So, back to my oil painting for beginners online course design. I certainly didn’t want it to be dull. And I didn’t want to bore students to death with too much theory. And I for sure didn’t want it to discourage people’s natural curiosity and creativity.

But I still wanted this to be a comprehensive fine art painting course.

I wanted to teach real Fine Art Principles, but in a fun way. Because when you learn the principles of art and design, you will be able to paint anything.

Now, lucky me, I had worked at the Ontarion Science Centre,one of the top science museums in the world, where I learned how to make science exciting and understandable for people 3-103 years old.

If we could make learning science fun, it could certainly be done with art.

So, to be clear, my course is not a “paint and sip”. I am not just telling you to copy something without explaining the “why” to you. I am teaching the fundamentals of oil painting so that you will have the confidence and ability to paint anything you want.

I want you to fall in love with painting so that you can’t wait to get back to the easel. Because the more you paint, the better you will get.

Thus I present to you…

… the Duma Do Art Process.

(Do the Duma Do, shooby doo. I’m not one to take myself too seriously.)

This is the course I wish I had when I started to paint.

In a way, it is the course I took … if you strip away all the wrong turns, stumbles, and circular wanderings I took along the way. You can think of it as me doing all the research so you don’t have to. So that you can spend more time actually practicing.

What’s the Duma Do?

The Duma Do is all about starting simply. So simply, you can’t say no. We want to build a lasting habit, and the best way to do that is with baby steps

So we start small. We start with mini paintings.

Learning via “small incremental steps over time” has been found to be very effective. Showing up and doing a little bit every day will add up to some really impressive gains over time. James Clear has written about continuous improvement, and I just learned that Kumon math follows this process too. Stanford professor BJ Fogg teaches it in Tiny Habits. And still others call it micro– or bite-sized learning.

In the Duma Do Art Process, we paint small paintings using the alla prima process. We do this so we can finish a painting fast.

Drawings can be done in 30 seconds. But paintings take much longer. A 16×20 inch painting can take 5 hours and up.

A mini oil painting can take just 30-90 minutes.

Finishing a painting feels great! So it becomes a natural incentive. The more we finish, the better we will get.

It’s also easier to find time to paint a mini painting in two hours than a larger painting. Some people even wake up early in the morning to finish one before going about the rest of their day.

I have tried this and it’s a great way to start the day. Putting yourself first, and starting the day with the feeling of pride and accomplishment — feels great.

But anytime will do.

So, if you’ve always wanted to paint, but can’t find the time, this is the course for you!

Even if you painted just once a week, you will have finished 52 paintings by the end of the year. That’s a lot of learning!

Oil painting basics for beginners

The Duma Do 10 is for absolute beginners. It’s 10 steps with prompts that are designed to take away the overwhelm of learning to oil paint.

• The steps help you to do things in the right order.
• And the prompts get you to answer questions, and start thinking and seeing things like an artist does.

What you will learn

My itty bitty Intro to Oil Painting Course is a comprehensive oil painting course designed especially for absolute beginners. It :

• is designed to get you painting quickly
• is designed so you can start with a minimum of investment: you just need to buy 4 things from the art store
• teaches you the basics of using the alla prima oil painting technique and gets you creating your first mini oil painting in under 3 hours
• introduces you to the principles of art in a fun and friendly way
• gives you an overview of all the other oil painting supplies and tools that are available to us oil painters
• offers suggestions and tips for getting over some of the plateaus of learning
• encourages you to explore and make lots and lots of mini paintings

But most importantly, I don’t just teach you my way of painting, but I introduce you to the whole world of painting. I want you to be able to explore and find your own style.

It’s a low blah blah course written in plain English

When I embarked on my learning to oil paint journey, I was quite confused at times. I think it’s because most of the teachers have been painting so long that they forgot what it’s like to be a beginner. So they glossed over bits that were old hat to them, which were, of course, the parts I was most confused about.

• I don’t know where to start. Do I paint the trees or the sky first?
• Why did you choose those colours? There are over 150 to choose from, so what’s wrong with the others?
• Does everyone do it this way, or are there others ways to paint?
• I don’t understand what you are doing.

Those are the kinds of questions I had in my head

I also think some courses go into far too much theory at the beginning. Do you really need to know the complete physics of light and colour before you can start painting?

No. You don’t!

(I’m not sure you will ever really need to know them actually. Unless super nerding it out with colour is going to be your “thing”. )

I think heaping loads of theory on a beginner is a waste of time.

If you don’t get to apply the principles right away, the information will go right over your head, and you will forget it.

We need to repeat thing as a beginner, or we will forget them. And we just aren’t ready to hear all about colour theory yet. We are just working on what it feels like to move paint around on a canas.

So, in my course, I try to keep the blah blah down. I slip in the principles of art while you are painting, so you can see how they work right away.

I also slip in some fine art history knowledge

I get to use my fine art history degree! Fine art history is fascinating because it ‘s the history of us, humans, and what we humans found important enough to paint.

I think it’s good to know the history of how art progressed before us, and how the masters before us figured things out. We can see our place in this long and noble tradition.

So, that’s it.

My itty bitty mini Intro to Oil Painting Course is almost finished. I’ve been testing it with a group of Founding students — and it works! It is so exciting to watch their paintings come in.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to try oil painting, I’d urge you to grab the course now. There’s nothing else like it. And low introductory price is going up as soon as the course is finished.

Also, check out my Free Irene Duma Teaches Art Facebook Group: painting is a solo activity, so it’s nice to have some artsy friends to share the journey with.

As for me, now that my course is close to being finished, I am Duma Doing the marketing. Oh, my, it’s terrifying. But small steps, baby … they will get you there.

Is there something you are currently working on that you think proceeding with mini steps will help? Or is there a better way? Let me know in the comments below.