The Foundations Of Oil Painting

My name is Christopher Fornataro and I want to be your paint coach!

I have been painting for over 15 years and in the last 5 years I have dialed in my teaching skills through my YouTube channel Paint Coach that is closing in on 500,000 subscribers. 

I teach thousands of students every month through my online courses and tutorials and now I want to teach you! 

It's time to go get painting!

There is a misconception that oil painting is more complicated and time consuming than other mediums like watercolors and acrylics. Nothing could be further from the truth. You will see as I did that oil paints are more forgiving and have way less limitations.

My goal with this course is to quickly solve any physical problems you might have with oil paints so we can get into what really makes a painting work.

To me there is nothing more fun than oil painting but I know I would not be having fun if I didn't know what I was doing. Painting is a form of artistic expression but you need the skills to be able to express yourself in the way you want. I always compare it to violin. If I picked up a violin with no skill and started playing it would be awful no matter how much I was expressing myself. The same goes for painting.

Imagine how great it would feel to actually be able to express yourself the way you want on the canvas!

I learned most of what I know about painting from online courses and tutorials so when it came time for me to make my own I wanted to make the course I wish I had.

Creating a course and teaching is a skill in itself. I have taken some lousy courses from masterful painters. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for courses that were just videos of the instructor painting and not even fully explaining how and why they were doing what they were doing.

I purposefully structured this course to prep the student with lectures and exercises before going into the final paint a long tutorial for each section.

This course aims to teach you what is at the core of any painting regardless of the subject.

At the core of any painting are the fundamentals. If you understand the fundamentals you can paint anything and everything.

By the end of the course you will have completed a still life, landscape, and portrait!

Color is a topic that I feel is over complicated by most instructors. I like to keep my palette simple with just the primaries and white. In the course I will show you how with just these four colors I can match any. color. The best part about learning color in this simple way is that after a certain amount of time color mixing will become instinctual. You will not have to think about it. Your hand will automatically reach for the right color.

Did you go to art school? Yeah me neither so you don't have to worry about me using fancy art lingo in this course.

I teach and explain important concepts in a simple way that anyone can understand.

Even if you are brand new to oil painting this course will make sure you know and understand the basics concepts needed to start painting and have fun.

Yes, it took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the sistine chapel but oil painting doesn't need to be that way.

Do you have 40 minutes? If yes then you have enough time to paint this small landscape study that is in the course!

In fact all of the paint along tutorials are under 2 hours so don't worry about slaving over a painting for weeks.

Do you feel overwhelmed when it comes to oil painting materials? No need to worry! I have boiled the materials down to just the essentials so you won't be wasting money on colors you never use and mediums that just confuse you.

A hear a lot of students say they want to stick to their acrylics because they don't like the slow dry time of oils.

What if I told you that the slow dry time is actually an advantage! This allows you to do so much more with the paint once it's on the canvas. This is why a lot of oil painters use linseed oil to make the paint dry even slower!

Trust me, by the end of the course you won't know how you painted with acrylics before.

Water mixable oils are a great way to transition into oils if you don't want to bother with solvents. This is why I added a lesson on water mixable oils where I show how I use them!

I get asked all the time if you need to know how to draw before you paint. My answer is no. You will naturally learn how to draw from painting but it for sure helps to know how to draw. That is why I have a section in this course on drawing. You will learn my favorite tricks and tips to get an accurate drawing so you can start painting.

Continue what you have learned in the course and take your skills even further with these 3 awesome tutorials!

Add confidence and expression to your paintings with the right brushwork. In this bonus section I will break down how you should think about brushwork and take you through my favorite brushwork exercise.

Take a full tour of my studio before I sit down and give my best advice for setting up your painting space no matter the size or budget.

There was a time when my "studio" was a 3ft x 8ft balcony of an apartment so I have a lot of experience maximizing a small space.

I will go over easels, lighting, palletes, and so much more.

One of the advantages of an online course opposed to an in-person course is that the student can move at their own pace. Once you have the course you can go through it as many times as you like and at whatever speed you like.

Don't waste any more paint trying to figure out oil painting on your own!