This course gives you more than 30 professionally produced films,
teaching you the basics of portrait painting and storytelling.
I will personally guide you for six weeks.
Afterwards you have access to the material for an extra 12 months.
CURRICULUM
The Portrait Watch me paint a life-size portrait from A to Z
Feedback Let me personally help you with your course painting
Bonus films Additional information on technical issues
Lectures On old master technique and storytelling in painting
THE PORTRAIT
Learn Kitsch Painting introduces you to the “Apelles palette”, consisting of only white, yellow ochre, Vermillion and black.
The main films show you my self-portrait, starting in the wet-in-wet technique.
These films will demonstrate basic principles such as:
- Reaching “an unfinished totality” before adding detail
- The importance of “value hierarchy”
- The importance of “contrast hierarchy”
- Establishing focus through manipulation of shadow and placement
- Where to paint thick/thin
- Sandpaper and glazing as painting techniques
- Etc.
FEEDBACK
- Receive comments on your course painting two days a week (video recording)
- One Q&A per week
- Option of 30 minute one-on-one conversations
LECTURES
Two lectures per module (12 in total)
1) Six lectures explaining the painting technique of the masters such as Velazquez, Rembrandt and Odd Nerdrum.
2) Six lectures explaining the importance of storytelling through Aristotle´s Poetics, books on screenwriting and the philosophy of kitsch.
BONUS MATERIAL
Each module also features bonus material, such as:
- Introduction to the “Apelles palette” & recommended colors
- How to set up your workshop
- How to stretch and prime the canvas
- Recommended brushes, painting medium, canvas, etc
- How to measure proportions
- The most efficient ways to spot mistakes
- How to pre-mix colors in a tube
- Etc.
WHAT KITSCH IS
According to Hans Reimann, the concept of “kitsch” came into being in mid-1800s Munich ateliers. Its purpose was to attack ”the previous culture,” making room for modern art. Historically, the term is linked with the birth of the system of the fine arts 100 years earlier.
While the latter praises aesthetical indifference, ”kitsch” encompasses sentimental and narrative paintings, literature and music. Kitsch motifs typically deal with the unchanging experiences of human life.
According to Tomas Kulka, these motifs could even be futher analyzed “in terms of Jungian archetypes”.
Odd Nerdrum has always identified with these values. In the manner of classical kitsch criticism, he has thus been reproached for his concern with past masters and sentimental, pathos-filled images.
Reading Hermann Broch´s essays on kitsch represented an immediate identification on the part of Nerdrum. In 1999, he inserted three articles (as ads) in ArtNews. Together with other authors, he published the books On Kitsch (2000) and Kitsch – More than Art (2011).
To Nerdrum and many others, the concept of kitsch represents a new superstructure for sincere and narrative figurative painting.