Find Painting lessons near me in Birmingham

Finding the Perfect Painting Tutor

When most people think of art, they probably think of painting. After all, it's one of the most common art forms around and the majority of work in every art gallery you visit will be paintings or drawings.

Humans have painted for over 60,000 years with examples of paintings being found famously on cave walls. Since then, painting has evolved a lot and some artists spend years studying the history of art and different painting techniques to paint at a good level.

If you're interested in the arts, painting, or drawing, you might want to attend art and design classes, do an art course at university, or get painting lessons from private tutors. With that in mind, let's see why studying art, painting, and drawing is important, the challenges artists face in their work, what we learn about painting in school, and how private tutors can help you gain experience and learn new skills.

Why it's Important to Study Painting

Painting can be surprisingly difficult. After all, you need a good understanding of the world around us just to accurately portray it in a drawing or painting. Paint can also be notoriously difficult to work with as unlike the graphite from a pencil or ink from a pen, you need to think about the medium that the pigment is suspended in, how it'll behave, and how it'll look once dried.

Paint is a tricky medium to work with and no two types of paint behave in the same way. If you don't study how to paint, you might be in for a surprise. Oils, for example, can take months to dry or watercolours can end up as mud if you use too much water. Be careful!

Art can also tell us a lot about our own culture and other cultures so it's important that we study it and how to paint to give us a better understanding of the world around us. Without this understanding, it may be difficult to effectively convey concepts through your work. Similarly, learning about other types of painting may be useful for inspiring you in your work.

Challenges in Painting

With so much to learn, painting can be quite the challenge. Before you can even start painting, you'll probably need to be quite good at drawing. If you don't understand form, shape, light, or composition, you'll struggle to design or plan out your work.

Learning how to paint can also take a long time. To get good at art, you need to regularly practise and painting is no exception. Even if you were quite good at art when you were at school, college, or university, you may find that you've completely forgotten how to draw or paint if you haven't done it for a while. As they say, "practice makes perfect".

Painting can be quite expensive, too. While a pack of pencils and a sketchbook won't cost you a fortune, an easel, canvas, brushes, and oil paints aren't cheap. You'll also need to pay for lessons or learning resources if you're serious about your art.

Areas of Painting Studied at School

For secondary school students in Birmingham, they can opt to study art at GCSE. This course will give them a good foundation in art and allow them to move onto art at A Level or study art at university.

While students will study painting, they'll also study ceramics, drawing, photography, and printing as an art GCSE is about visual art in general and not just painting.

They'll also study the creative process, allowing them to plan out work and develop their ideas. Students will need to find inspiration, do analytical drawings, create design briefs, experiment with materials and techniques, and review and annotate their work to improve.

There's also a good focus on the elements of art. These elements include line, colour, tone, shape, form, space, texture, and pattern, which are all important concepts for any aspiring painter to understand.

Art GCSE students also need to understand the principles of design and they'll look at balance, emphasis, proportion, unity, variety, and rhythm.

As they progress through their art education, students will be given more opportunities to move away from art in general and focus on their painting.

Private Tuition in Painting

Whether you're studying art at GCSE or just looking to learn how to paint as a hobby, private tuition is a great way to learn. Private tutors will teach you exactly what you want to learn and adapt their lessons to you and how you like to learn. For example, you can find private tutors who specialise in oils, acrylics, watercolours, etc. and different art styles.

For students, art tutors can help improve their grades by focusing on the aspects of art and painting that they're struggling with and teaching them in a way that works well with their personality.

If you're looking for private classes to learn how to paint just for fun, you can find tutors with experience teaching adult students or painting as a hobby.

Finding a Painting Tutor in Birmingham

If you'd like to learn how to paint but don't fancy attending an art school in Birmingham, search for painting tutors on Superprof and you can learn how to paint from the comfort of your own home. View each profile, see what experience they have, and read reviews left by their former students.

A lot of the professional tutors on Superprof will offer the first hour of teaching for free so try a few different ones out before settling on the best teacher for you. Make sure you're clear about your reasons for wanting to paint so that the tutors can adapt their courses to you.

For those on a budget, you might want to organise group tutorials or workshops with a private tutor. If you and a few friends want to get together and learn to paint, it'll work out cheaper per person per hour as you can share the cost of the tutor's time and expertise.

You can also get private painting tutorials online. If there are no suitable tutors in Birmingham, you can get art tutorials from tutors all over the world as long as you have a webcam and a decent internet connection!

Ready to become an artist?