ART1500C – Painting I is a 3-credit introductory studio course in opaque painting — oil, acrylic, or both — covering materials, technique, color, and composition. The C suffix reflects the studio format, typically 2 lecture and 4 laboratory hours weekly, which is why contact hours run well above the credit value.
See the numbering note below before registering: Florida carries introductory painting at two levels under two numbers, and the difference is prerequisites rather than content.
Painting is where students who have drawn confront a different problem. Drawing is largely about value and line; painting adds color, which behaves in ways that are not intuitive — a color is never seen in isolation, its appearance shifts with what surrounds it, and mixing it is subtractive rather than additive. It also adds materials that have opinions: paint has viscosity, drying time, and transparency, and a technique that works in acrylic fails in oil.
Content covers materials and their behavior — oil and acrylic paints, mediums, solvents, supports, grounds, and brushes; surface preparation — stretching, sizing, and priming; color theory applied — hue, value, chroma, temperature, complements, and simultaneous contrast; mixing — achieving a target color, neutralizing, and the limited palette; value structure — establishing the light logic before color; paint application — brushwork, glazing, scumbling, impasto, and wet-into-wet; working methods — underpainting, direct painting (alla prima), and layered approaches; composition — format, arrangement, focal point, and negative space; observational painting — still life, interior, and landscape; light and form — rendering three dimensions with color; edges as a compositional tool; studio safety — solvents, ventilation, and pigment handling; critique — giving and receiving it; and presentation — varnishing, framing, and documentation.
Offered widely at Florida institutions with studio art programs.
Florida supports an unusually active market for painters: a dense circuit of art festivals and outdoor shows among the largest in the country, a strong tourist and second-home market for coastal and regional subjects, numerous art leagues and community art centers, and a large retiree population that both buys work and takes classes — which makes teaching a realistic income component. Central Florida's themed entertainment industry additionally employs scenic artists and concept artists year-round.
Worth stating precisely, because the numbering is often misread. In Florida's Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit denotes the year in which the course is normally offered — 1 for the first year, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, 4 for the fourth — not how well it transfers.
Separately from transfer, SCNS equivalency is keyed to the course number. A program that requires a specific number is satisfied by that number from any participating institution. A different number with similar content still transfers as credit, but the receiving program decides whether it fills that particular requirement or counts as elective credit — a curriculum question to settle with an advisor, not a barrier to the credit transferring.
The numbering point to settle before registering, and an unusually clean example of a pattern worth watching. Florida carries introductory painting under two numbers with the same title and the same credit value:
The content overlaps substantially; the difference is level and prerequisite structure. Both are lower division and both transfer transparently; the question is not whether the credit moves but whether a receiving program that names ART2500C specifically will count ART1500C toward that requirement or as elective credit. For a general education or elective student this rarely matters. For a student intending a studio art major it matters a great deal, and the safer choice is the number the receiving institution uses. Ask an advisor before registering.
The conceptual difficulty of the course. A color is never perceived in isolation — the same gray looks warm against blue and cool against orange, and a mixed color that looked correct on the palette frequently looks wrong on the canvas because it is now surrounded by different neighbors.
The practical consequences are specific. Judge color in context, on the painting, not on the palette. Establish value first, because value carries most of the information about form and a painting with correct values reads even if the color is odd — while correct color over wrong values does not. And use a limited palette early: three primaries and white forces you to mix, which teaches color relationships far faster than a large set of pre-mixed tubes, and produces more unified paintings as a side effect.
The most common beginner complaint and the most commonly misdiagnosed. Students describe their paintings as "muddy" and assume they mixed too many colors. Usually the actual cause is value collapse — everything drifting to the middle range so nothing reads as light or dark — or overworking wet paint until the layers blend into gray.
Three habits fix it: mix with intention and stop when the color is right rather than continuing to adjust; keep the value range open, deliberately reserving a genuine lightest light and darkest dark; and stop touching it — wet paint mixes on the canvas whether or not you meant it to. Squinting at the work, or photographing it and converting to grayscale, diagnoses value problems in seconds.
Worth taking seriously in an oil painting course. Solvents — turpentine and mineral spirits — produce vapors that are harmful with sustained exposure, and studios are frequently under-ventilated. Some pigments carry their own hazards, particularly cadmium and cobalt compounds, which matter if handled carelessly.
The practices: work with ventilation; use odorless mineral spirits or water-mixable oils where permitted; keep solvent containers closed; never eat, drink, or point a brush with your mouth; wash hands rather than cleaning them with solvent; and dispose of oily rags properly — rags soaked in linseed oil can spontaneously combust, which is a real and documented studio fire cause, not a cautionary myth. Acrylic avoids most of this, which is one reason many programs start there.
Different from academic courses in a way that catches students out. Demonstrations, working time, and critique cannot be made up by reading, and instructors circulate while students work — which is where most of the actual teaching happens. Attendance is heavily weighted, materials are the student's responsibility, and open studio time outside class is expected rather than optional.
Two habits that help: photograph everything, including failures, because progress across a term is invisible from inside it and transfer portfolio reviewers are interested in trajectory; and treat critique as normal professional practice rather than as criticism of you. Learning to discuss work in specific terms — what a choice accomplishes rather than whether you like it — is itself a graded skill.
Worth planning for from the first studio course. Florida B.F.A. programs, and most B.A. programs with a studio concentration, require a portfolio review for admission to the major regardless of how many studio credits transfer — and reviewers generally want to see drawing fundamentals alongside finished work in a medium. Photograph work consistently in even light, retain the strongest pieces, keep ART1300C Drawing I and ART1201C Two-Dimensional Design work as well, and ask the receiving institution what their review expects. Credits and portfolio are two separate gates, and the second one decides.
Florida carries painting as ART1500C and ART2500C (both "Painting I"), with ART1501C and ART2501C as the corresponding second courses and ART3504C and higher at the upper division. Related studio numbers include ART1300C/ART1301C drawing, ART1201C/ART1203C design, ART2330C life drawing, ART2540C watercolor, and ART2400C printmaking. SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers — which is precisely the point of the warning above.
Generated September 1, 2026 · Updated September 1, 2026