ADMISSIONS FOR FALL 2025 NOW OPEN

The Painter’s Walk: Observing, Reflecting, Creating

About this class

Join this immersive oil painting workshop series designed to enhance your understanding of brushstrokes and color application. Each session begins with an hour outdoors in nature to observe, focus, and connect with the environment before moving into the studio for hands-on painting. Through guided exercises, you will explore how different brush techniques and color choices can transform your work, helping you develop a personal painting style. 

Class Outline

  • WORKSHOP 1 (Jan 26, 2026)- The Power of Brushstrokes 
  • WORKSHOP 2 (Jan 28,2026) – Letting Go of Control – Imaginary Place

Details

Each session offers a unique theme, making it a fresh experience for returning participants while ensuring newcomers can fully engage. Whether you are a beginner or looking to refine your skills, this workshop is the perfect opportunity to explore the expressive potential of oil painting. 

Objective: Understanding the impact of brushstrokes in oil painting and how they convey emotion and energy. 

Outdoor (1st Hour): Oxygen Park

  • Silent observation & quick sketching exercise 
  • Noticing textures in nature (leaves, bark, sky, etc.) 
  • Discussion: How do textures influence painting? 

Indoor Studio (2nd & 3rd Hour): 

  • Introduction to different brushstrokes (bold, delicate, impasto, dry brush)
  • Exercise: Experimenting with brushwork using a single color 
  • Painting prompt: Create an abstract landscape focusing on expressive strokes 

Outdoor (1st Hour): Oxygen Park

  • Quiet observation: Looking at real places around us, then reimagining them differently—what if the horizon was curved? What if buildings melted into the sky?
  • Quick sketching exercise: Take an ordinary scene (a park, a street, a courtyard) and transform it into something new. 
  • Discussion: How do artists create dreamlike, emotional spaces through color and form?

Indoor Studio (2nd & 3rd Hour): 

  • Exercise 1: Abstract underpainting – starting with a loose background of shapes and colors without a set plan. 
  • Exercise 2: Building their imaginary place by adding unusual elements—stretching, distorting, or reshaping reality through expressive brushwork. 
  • Painting Prompt: Create a place that exists only in your imagination. It can be surreal, emotional, dreamlike, or completely abstract—there are no rules.

Materials needed

Please note that VCUarts Qatar reserves the right to cancel any class that does not meet the minimum enrollment requirement. Any fees already paid will be refunded.
Kindly refrain from purchasing materials until you receive the final course confirmation from VCUarts Qatar.

Material kits will be provided for participants. This includes:

  • Canvas
  • Oil painting
  • Different size paint brushes
  • Palette knives
  • Paper palette

Schedule


Lessons: 2 (Jan 26 & 28, 2026)
Days: Monday & Wednesday
Time: 5:00 – 8:00pm
Location: VCUarts Qatar Campus
Cost: 500 QAR per session/ 800 QAR for 2 session

Instructor

 Salma Aw5y2449

Salma Awad

Salma Awad is a painter and printmaker whose work is a reflection of her adventures across countries, capturing the distinct impressions and sensory nuances each place evokes in her. Nature is the mentor that drives her creative process. She preserves powerful moments and intimate dialogues experienced in the natural world by translating them to spontaneous marks and a palette that captures the essence of each encounter. Salma graduated with latin honors from VCUarts Qatar in 2020. Creating for her is a transformative journey of self-discovery and a means to engage others in exploring deeper dimensions of perceiving and connecting.