Painting II-Intermediate

Course Description

Painting II-Intermediate includes fundamentals review and develops individuality, using observational and conceptual experiences and projects. It stresses understanding and perceiving color, using media and techniques appropriate to the student's personal development, and is primarily for art majors. UWF notes that credit may not be earned in both ART3530C and ART3504C and that a material and supply fee will be assessed.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, ART is the Art prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Art and Design, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. It is offered at approximately 5 Florida institutions.

⚠ The queue title for this number is "Intermediate Painting"; UWF publishes it as "Painting II-Intermediate." The same course, differently ordered.

The second painting course is where a student stops executing assignments and starts making decisions. UWF's wording is precise about this: it develops individuality and uses media appropriate to the student's personal development. The teaching moves from "here is how to do it" to "what are you trying to do, and is this working" — which is harder, less comfortable, and the actual content of an art education.

Colour is named explicitly, and it is the technical core. Perceiving colour accurately — seeing that a shadow is not grey but a specific hue — is a trainable perceptual skill, and it is the difference between paintings that look muddy and paintings that do not.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, prerequisites, repeatability, and fee notices. It does not publish contact hours, a lecture and studio split, or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. For a 3-credit studio course the figure used is 60 hours — four studio hours a week across a fifteen-week term. That matches the Florida convention for an integrated C course and is corroborated by the one studio figure published anywhere in this corpus: Daytona State's ART1331C, which states "four studio hours". ⚠ Treat it as a floor. Studio courses commonly schedule longer blocks, and studio practice expects substantial work outside the scheduled session — open-studio hours are part of how the work gets made. Confirm the schedule and the studio access hours with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Review and apply painting fundamentals including support preparation and paint handling.
• Perceive and mix colour accurately from observation.
• Describe and apply colour temperature, relationships, and harmony.
• Control value structure across a painting.
• Paint from direct observation with accurate proportion and relationship.
• Develop work from concept as well as from observation.
• Select media and technique appropriate to an intention.
• Use underpainting, layering, glazing, or direct methods as appropriate.
• Control edge quality and its effect on space.
• Compose at the scale and format chosen.
• Develop a personal direction across a sequence of works.
• Analyse historical and contemporary painting using appropriate vocabulary.
• Articulate the intention behind your own work.
• Participate constructively in critique and revise in response.
• Prepare and present work to a professional standard.
• Document paintings photographically.
• Apply solvent and pigment safety practice.

Optional Outcomes

• Develop a sustained body of work rather than isolated exercises.
• Document work photographically to portfolio standard.
• Situate your work relative to contemporary practice in the medium.
• Exhibit work in a student or juried show.
• Write an artist statement about the work produced.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Fundamentals review; supports and grounds
• Colour perception and mixing
• Colour temperature and relationships
• Value structure
• Observational painting
• Conceptual development
• Media and technique selection
• Layering, glazing, direct painting
• Edge quality and space
• Scale and format
• Developing a personal direction
• Historical and contemporary reference
• Articulating intention
• Critique and revision
• Presentation standards
• Documentation
• Solvent and pigment safety

Optional Topics

• Sustained body of work
• Portfolio documentation
• Contemporary practice in the medium
• Exhibition
• Artist statement writing

Resources & Tools

• The instructor's materials list — ⚠ paint quality genuinely matters. Student-grade paint has less pigment and more filler, and a student fighting bad paint concludes they cannot mix colour. Buy fewer, better tubes.
• A limited palette to start — a warm and cool of each primary plus white will mix almost anything, and learning that is worth more than owning forty tubes.
• Solvent handling and a metal safety can — see the safety section; this is not optional in oil painting.
• Museum and gallery access — seeing paintings in person is not replaceable by reproduction; surface, scale and edge quality do not photograph. Florida options include the Pensacola Museum of Art locally, and the Ringling in Sarasota, the Norton in West Palm Beach and the Dalí in St. Petersburg further afield.
• UWF Department of Art and Design studios — open studio hours are the resource that matters most; find out what they are in week one and use them.
• A camera and a consistent setup for documenting work — a phone plus even lighting and a neutral background is enough. Photograph everything before it leaves your hands.
• Safety data sheets for your materials — free, and the studio is required to hold them.

Career Pathways

• Fine artists, including painters, sculptors, and illustrators — SOC 27-1013; ⚠ predominantly self-employed, and income is irregular. This is worth knowing plainly rather than discovering later.
• Graphic designers — SOC 27-1024; the largest paid destination for studio art graduates, and digital coursework feeds it directly.
• Special effects artists and animators — SOC 27-1014; Florida has a real cluster here through the Orlando theme-park and simulation industry.
• Art directors — SOC 27-1011; normally reached after years in a design role.
• Craft artists — SOC 27-1012; ceramics, glass and studio craft, frequently combined with teaching or markets.
• Florida employers and sectors worth naming — Walt Disney Imagineering and Universal Creative in Orlando hire sculptors, painters, model-makers and scenic artists; the simulation and training cluster in Orlando hires 3D and digital artists; and Florida's tourism economy supports scenic, signage and display work statewide.
• Museums and galleries — SOC 25-4012, 25-4013; preparator, installer, registrar and education roles.
• Art teaching — SOC 25-2022 and 25-1121; ⚠ K-12 art teaching in Florida requires state certification, which a studio degree alone does not provide — plan the education route deliberately if this is the goal.
• Art therapy — requires a master's degree and credentialing; a studio degree is the usual undergraduate foundation.
• ⚠⚠ An honest note on the economics. Very few studio art graduates support themselves from selling their own work, and most working artists hold other employment. That is not an argument against the degree — the transferable skills are real — but a plan that assumes gallery income is a plan without a foundation. Build the applied and digital skills alongside the studio practice.

Special Information

⚠ Studio fees are assessed for this course

• UWF publishes a material and supply fee notice on this entry. It is charged in addition to tuition and the amount is not published in the course entry.
• The amounts are in the catalog's separate Material & Supply and Equipment Fees section. ⚠ Budget for them — studio fees are billed with tuition and are invisible when a student estimates a term from credit hours alone.
• ⚠⚠ Art is among the most expensive undergraduate subjects to study, because the fee rarely covers everything. Expect to buy your own materials on top — and in painting, ceramics and printmaking that is a recurring cost across every term, not a one-off.
• Ask the department for a realistic per-term total across fees plus personal materials before committing to a studio-heavy schedule.

⚠⚠ Credit may not be earned in both this course and ART3530C

• UWF states this restriction in the catalog entry. The two numbers are treated as covering the same ground, and only one may count toward a degree.
• ⚠ The restriction surfaces at degree audit, which can be late. Check before enrolling if a prior or transfer course may map to ART3530C.
• Transfer students are the exposed population, since an incoming course articulated to the other number will block this one and the titles will not make that obvious.

⚠⚠ Critique is the method — and it is the part students find hardest

• Studio courses are assessed largely through critique: work is put up, discussed by the group, and defended by the maker. It is a teaching method, not a verdict.
• ⚠ Learning to hear criticism of work you care about is a genuine skill, and it is separable from criticism of you. Students who cannot make that separation stall.
• ⚠⚠ Learning to give useful criticism matters as much. "I like it" and "I don't like it" are both useless. Describe what you see, then what it does, then whether that serves the work's apparent intention — that sequence is the whole technique.
• Bring finished work. Arriving at critique with nothing wastes the most valuable hour in the course, and it is visible to everyone.
• Document everything you make — good photographs, consistently lit, as you go. Work gets sold, given away, damaged or lost, and the documentation becomes the portfolio.

⚠⚠ Studio safety — art materials are chemicals, and some are seriously hazardous

• Read the safety data sheet for anything you use. Studios are required to hold them, and art materials are not regulated as consumer-safe by default.
• ⚠⚠ Solvents require ventilation. Turpentine, mineral spirits and lacquer thinner give off vapour that accumulates; chronic low-level exposure is the real risk, not a single strong smell. Use the ventilated area, keep containers closed, and never wash solvent down a drain.
• ⚠ Some pigments are genuinely toxic — cadmium, cobalt, chromium and lead compounds appear in artists' colours. Never eat, drink or point a brush with your mouth in a studio, and wash hands before leaving.
• ⚠⚠ Silica dust is a long-term hazard in ceramics and in any dry sanding or grinding. It causes irreversible lung disease, a dust mask is not respiratory protection, and dry sweeping makes it worse than leaving it. Wet-clean.
• Printmaking uses acids and strong solvents, and etching in particular requires specific handling, ventilation and disposal.
• Power tools, kilns, presses and torches all carry injury risk. Do not operate equipment you have not been trained and cleared on, and never work alone in a studio with powered equipment.
• ⚠ Rags soaked in oil or solvent can self-ignite. This is a documented cause of studio fires — use the metal safety can provided.
• Tell the instructor if you are pregnant or have a respiratory condition; several standard studio materials warrant substitution.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Studio course, assessed through produced work and critique rather than by examination.
• ⚠ The scheduled hours are not the working hours. Studio practice expects substantial independent work, and students who only work during class do not produce enough to critique.
• UWF publishes no contact hours, studio split, or terms of offering for any course. Confirm the schedule and studio access with the department.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement. ⚠ For studio art there is an additional constraint: many programmes require portfolio review for admission to the major or to upper-division studios, and a receiving programme may accept the credit while still requiring its own portfolio review. Keep photographs of everything you make — the portfolio, not the transcript, is what moves you between art programmes.

ART3504C is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida.