Acrylic Painting: Exploring Intuitive and Experimental Techniques
Step into a world of bold colour and expressive freedom in this intuitive acrylic painting course with artist Farida Zaman. Over four in-person sessions, you’ll explore spontaneous techniques, experiment with surface texture and layering, and develop your own personal painting style. Whether you’re new to acrylics or ready to shake up your practice, this course invites you to paint with confidence, energy, and heart.
Acrylic Painting: Exploring Intuitive and Experimental Techniques is a four-day, in-person course led by artist Farida Zaman, designed for anyone eager to explore the expressive possibilities of acrylic paint. This course offers a space to step away from rigid rules and embrace a more intuitive, mindful approach to art-making. Through guided exercises and open-ended exploration, you’ll learn how to use acrylics in fresh, spontaneous ways, experimenting with layering, blending, glazing, and textural techniques unique to this versatile medium.
Farida will encourage you to trust your instincts and respond to your materials in the moment, using bold colour, gestural mark-making, and dynamic composition to capture energy and emotion on canvas. You’ll work on various surfaces, discovering how acrylics can be manipulated for transparency, texture, and graphic impact. This workshop is about loosening up, taking creative chances, and developing a personal visual language that feels authentic and alive. All levels are welcome.
- Explore a range of acrylic painting techniques, including layering, glazing, dry brushing, and impasto.
- Develop confidence in intuitive mark-making and mindful, process-driven approaches to painting.
- Learn to use colour, contrast, and movement to evoke mood and energy in your work.
- Experiment with texture and surface manipulation using acrylic mediums and tools.
- Discover how to balance spontaneity with composition to create dynamic, expressive paintings.
- Build a personal approach to acrylic painting that emphasizes freedom, experimentation, and authentic self-expression.
- Paint-based media:
Paint Colours: Titanium White (Large tube), Cadmium Yellow Light or Hansa Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red Medium, Ultramarine Blue (Large Tube), Thalo Blue, Quinacridone Magenta or Medium Magenta, Dioxazine Purple (optional), Phthalo Green or Viridian Green, Permanent Green or Green Light (optional), Sap Green (with a strong value), Cadmium Orange or other Yellow Orange, Raw Umber (optional), Indanthrene Blue (Indigo Blue in oils - optional), Transparent Red Oxide (optional), Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black
Gesso - small tub (ex. Liquitex or Golden)
Matte Medium
Disposable Palette (9x12 or larger)
Brushes: 3, 4, 8, 10
Flat Brushes: #3, 6, 8, 12 (Soft hair/synthetic) - Round Brushes: #1, 2, 4 (soft hair synthetic or sable)
- Canvas Pad 9x12
Or stretched canvases small or large based on the students comfort level

Details
Fee: $275 & HST
Wednesdays August 6, 13, 20, 27 | 1:15 - 3:45pm
720 Bathurst St
Toronto, ON
M5S 2R4
Led by: