Shades of light: Painting in monochrome
- Thursday, 12 March 2026
- Friday, 13 March 2026
Enrol
| Standard: | £360 |
| Concessions: | £324 |
Please book a ticket to attend this course which will take place in the Roden Centre for Creative Learning.
Tickets include entry to the National Gallery. Please arrive in good time to access the building and find the event.
Bookings close 10 minutes before the event begins.
Concessions are for full-time students, jobseekers, and disabled adults.
About
Join artist Jo Lewis for a two-day watercolour course exploring the expressive power of painting in monochrome.
Through focused exercises and experimentation, discover how a single hue, black, can create a world of depth, drama and emotion, and how working within this seemingly simple constraint opens up vast expressive possibilities.
Across the two days, we will spend time working in the Gallery, in the ‘Wright of Derby: From the Shadows’ exhibition, as well as the Clore Art Studio as we explore the power of the monochrome and develop our own skills in response. Through practical exercises and guided demonstrations, you’ll explore the vital interplay of light and shadow to convey emotion, drama and immediacy. Working with washes, tonal layering, brushwork and texture, you’ll experiment with different materials and techniques to deepen your relationship with this most subtle and expansive way of painting.
This course is suitable all levels, from beginners to experienced artists looking to refresh their practice. All materials are provided and you can take your artworks home with you. Handouts with extra resources are also provided. All sessions take place onsite in our state-of-the-art Clore Art Studio in our Roden Centre for Creative Learning
Shades of light: Painting in monochrome
In the first day, we will start by exploring a range of techniques and materials for painting in monchrome, and what exactly monchrome work offers us, through exercises designed to widen our knowledge and inspire our imagination. Using water-soluble media, we will draw in front of chosen pieces in the National Gallery Collection with a particular focus on contrasts in light and dark and subtle variations of tone, as used to build space and convey narrative.
Back in the studio we will create work both small scale and large inspired by our looking and ideas with ink and other water-soluble media.
Shades of light: Painting in monochrome
The second day will begin with exploring more techniques in monochrome painting, equipping ourselves with as many possibilities as we look to develop our own personal work. We will visit and briefly make work in the Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ exhibition, focusing today on atmosphere and mood, and how to create strong, emotionally impactful compositions in monochrome.
Back in the Clore Art Studio, we will spend time planning and preparing a new series of personal work, making careful decisions about type of paper, techniques, paint application, scale of work and intentions.
Your tutor
Jo Lewis is a London-based artist. She works primarily with ink and watercolour on paper and her work explores aspects of movement and stasis, and the fragility of the moment of interaction between pigment and paper. Recent series have been based around bodies of water and landscapes in Guangxi, the Rhone river and the river Thames. Jo’s work has been featured in exhibitions in both the UK and internationally. She has had recent solo shows in London, Paris and Lyon. She is currently preparing for upcoming teaching and a residency in Iceland this summer. Recent group shows include at Vivienne Roberts Projects in London, in Lyon, The Trinity Buoy Wharf 2024 Drawing Prize, Galerie Papiers d’Art, Paris, and SEE Galerie, Paris. She was also invited to present her work at the Drawing Research Network Conference: ‘Temporal Drawing 1', 2023 and at the Radical Drawing Symposium held by the University of Leeds Beckett in 2024. Her work has been commissioned and collected by individuals and institutions globally including Hermès, Royal College of Music, 22 Bishopsgate, Commonwealth Bank of Australis, Ashtead Hospital, Paris Baguette, Seoul. and the OWO Raffles Hotel, London.