Patti Mollica

It was by sheer accident that I came across Patti Mollica’s online art course. I was fortunate enough to find the class just a couple of weeks before registration closed. I had been looking for some time for a course that was based online, with some structure, that wasn’t geared towards total beginners. A lot of the well known courses start you from the ground up, giving you the foundation and basics to build upon. They also tend to be for watercolours and oils – while I’m very much an acrylic painter. As I’m more intermediate (between beginner and intermediate, really, based on the limited time I have to practise), and I’m limited on time, I didn’t want to waste time going over old ground, although I always appreciate the practise that comes with rote exercises.

So, with lots of enthusiasm, I signed up to the Online Color Workshop (sic – she’s based in USA). The timings worked out very well – as a full time worker the 6pm GMT live conference classes were an ideal start time. On the East Coast of USA this translated to around 1pm on the set day each week. We met once a week, for 5 weeks, and if you missed it, you could catch up with the recorded session at a later date. These were in the form of presentations with lots of information, from basic to advance techniques. The homework also reflected different levels of skill, and you could choose what to do. I tried to do it all (as did some others), but found quickly that I needed to be more selective and focus on the exercises I chose. I will, however, go back to the exercises I didn’t manage to complete (there were up to 4 each week to choose from).

There was so much information to take on board – colour theory is such a broad topic and feeds into other areas of study such as composition and value, that I don’t consider my studying “done” by any means. A lot of the information and further reading recommended will continue for me to get the most out of this.

If you enjoy loose painting styles, particularly in acrylic, and wish to further your knowledge – do look out for Patti‘s courses. She also runs workshops.

Here are some of the studies I produced for this course:

All course content and photo references © Patti Mollica