Expressive Painting for Adults

Level: All levels welcome.
Primary Focus: Depth, intention, refinement, and personal visual language

Course Description
This course encourages students to loosen up, explore emotion and movement in paint, and develop a personal expressive style. Through guided exercises and creative experimentation, students will learn to use color, gesture, and composition to convey mood rather than realism.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Strengthen their personal visual voice
• Balance intuition with intentional composition
• Work through creative resistance and plateaus
• Develop a cohesive mini-series
• Learn when to push, pause, and finish a painting

Course Outline

• Re-Entering the Flow
  Focus: Reconnecting with intuition
• Composition & Structure
  Focus: Organizing emotion on the canvas
• Layering, Depth & Complexity
  Focus: Building visual history
• Symbol, Metaphor & Meaning
  Focus: Personal narrative
• Working in a Series
  Focus: Cohesion and continuity
• Resolution Without Overworking
  Focus: Knowing when a painting is finished

Supply list: Acrylics, oils or water colors (colors are students choice), Canvas boards/paper, Brushes (small to extra large), palette knives, Rags, spray bottle, palette, sketchbook 

Optional: mixed media (charcoal, pastel, collage elements)

Cancellations are non-refundable within 48 hours of this event.

Patrick Wise is a full-time painter based in Northern Michigan. 

He holds a Master’s degree in Painting from Wayne State University and has taught drawing and painting at several colleges in the Detroit area. 

Inspired by the beauty of Northern Michigan, he encourages creativity and personal expression in his classes.