Saltspring Island: LOOSEN UP – A PAINTING WEEKEND March 28/29, 2026
This workshop is now full. To be added to the waitlist for a future Loosen Up workshop, please drop me an email: val@valnelson.ca
Location: SIMS Salt Spring Island
Time: 9:30 – 4:00
Instructor: Val Nelson
For more information and to register, please contact:
Salt Spring Painters’ Guild: https://www.ssipaintersguild.com/classes
Levels: All levels – some previous painting experience is recommended
Price: $235
Max participants: 12
Learn powerful strategies for injecting expressive energy into your paintings while retaining strong structure and recognizable form.
In this workshop we will engage in various modalities that will help you tune into and embody your fierce and joyful creator self, while advancing your painting chops!
These include calming breath work and intention setting, drawing warm-ups, painting diverse subject matter, and other playful strategies to break you out of your usual habits.
What you will learn:
•How to paint more loosely
• How to break free from the inner critic so you can enjoy your studio time
• Painting games to warm up your practise
•Tips on brushwork, composition, drawing, and colour mixing, including how to avoid “muddiness”
• How to tune in and learn to trust your unique artistic voice
What you will gain from this workshop:
• Have fun making art with like-minded artists
• Engaging strategies to get things moving in the studio
• Clarity on handling your painting materials in a way that feels right for you
• Better understanding of colour theory
• Renewed confidence in your unique artistic practise
Although Val will be mostly demonstrating in acrylic paint, she is very fluent in working with oils, therefore oil and acrylic painters are welcome.
Materials List:
HB pencil, eraser, pencil sharpener
Sketchbook approx 9 x 12 inches
Six – 12 x 16” or 16 x 20 primed canvasses or Sino-Art Canvas pad 12 x 16″ or 16 x 20. Prime these once more with white acrylic gesso and lightly sand with fine sandpaper before the workshop. Make sure this is dry by class time. This provides a “speedy” surface.
White acrylic gesso for priming (Golden brand recommended)
Paint:
If you can, try to buy Artist quality
Recommended Oil paint brands (this list is not exhaustive):
Gamblin, Winsor and Newton, Old Holland, Van Gogh, Michael Harding, Lukas. If you prefer not to use solvents, you may enjoy the water-soluble oil paints now available which clean up with soap and water–I find Cobra brand is very good. If so, make sure you get the brand’s dedicated painting medium.
Recommended Acrylic paint brands: Golden, Liquitex, Winsor and Newton, Kroma. Please try to buy “heavy body” paint; the techniques we are covering do not cover paint pouring methods, but if “flow” type paints are what you have, bring those as they are nice for glazing.
It may be helpful, however to fortify your kit with one tube of heavy body Titanium white for surface texture variety.
Paint Colours (Oil or Acrylic)
Titanium white
Cadmium yellow light
Cadmium yellow deep or Hansa yellow deep
Yellow Ochre
Cadmium red light
Quinacrodone red
Alizarin crimson permanent
Burnt umber
Ultramarine blue
Cerulean blue
Pthalo green
Brushes: Bring a range of sizes and shapes. Below is a suggested list:
Bristle brush Rounds #12, #6, #4, #2
Bristle brush or synthetic flats or filberts #12, #6, #4, #2
1.5″ flat brush synthetic
Optional but recommended:
Rosemary and Co 1/4″ long-handled Eclipse “comber”. 1″, 1/2″, 1/4″. This is a fantastic brush for sensitive detail good for oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache. You can order these from this website in England: https://www.rosemaryandco.com/oil-brushes/eclipse-oils/eclipse-combers
Palette:
Oil painters: 12 x 16” minimum size. Your choice: white disposable palette pad, or glass palette with paper underneath, or you may have another palette system such as a wooden or plastic palette that you like to use.
Acrylic painters 12 x 16” minimum size. Your choice: MASTERSON Sta-wet Palette and its dedicated palette sheets and sponge layer included, or white disposable palette pad, or white choroplast or hard plastic rectangle.
Oil painting Thinner and Mediums:
Gamblin Gamsol Odorless Mineral Spirits for thinning your paint, and for cleanup. No turpentine please.
Refined walnut or linseed oil mixed 50/50 with Gamsol; I like to use this as my medium as it dries more slowly than alkyd resins therefore is less sticky on the canvas. However some of you may prefer using only oil, or only spirits, or Gambling Galkyd Lite or Liquitex Liquin, while some of you may prefer using just OMS, or just linseed oil, or just paint.
150-200 ml glass container with lid for OMS to clean your brushes
150-200 ml glass container with lid to store your medium
Metal Palette cup to decant your medium mixture for attaching to your palette you are painting
Optional: 1 litre glass jar to hold brushes
Mediums and Accessories for Acrylic painters:
I use just water when painting the first lay-in when working with acrylics. To soften edges on later applications of paint, I sometimes like Golden Open Medium; helpful for slowing paint drying time and increasing transparency and flow.
150-200 ml glass jar with lid for your medium. Thin it a little with water to further slow drying time
Large spray bottle for water with a fine mist pattern
Small and large containers for water and mediums, such as yogurt containers.
Miscellaneous:
Two pairs wooden chopsticks
Painters’ tape 1″ width
Plenty of rags such as old tea-towels (fat fleecy towels not the best) or blue painters rag that comes in a roll.
Easel (if not provided in studio space)
Small metal tapered diamond shape palette knife (approx length of blade 1.5″. Try to get one that is pliable/bendable
Apron or old clothes Old shoes
Artist Biography An Honours graduate of Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Val Nelson has had a dynamic painting career marked by solo and group shows across Canada and internationally, including Bau-Xi Gallery, Galerie de Bellefeuille, and Surrey Art Gallery, and short-listing for the Royal Bank Painting prize,
In addition to her artistic output, she is an experienced painting instructor dedicated to mentoring emerging artists. Since 2009, she has taught painting both in-person and online and contributed as a guest instructor at institutions including North Island College, Vancouver Island School of Art, and Gordon Smith Gallery; she has also led a painting retreat in Tuscany.
Artist website: https://valnelson.ca
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valnelsonpainter/