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Course curriculum

    1. Student Orientation Video

    2. Join your community!

    3. Materials

    4. Vocabulary

    1. Preparing to Paint

    2. Preparing the Materials

    3. Adding Local Values

About this course

  • $79.99
  • 7 lessons
  • 1.5 hours of video content

Great Value

Learn a lifelong skill for the price of a trip to the art supply store

Course overview

This course, led by Melanie Berardicelli at the New York Academy of Art, introduces the fundamentals of painting through monochromatic studies. Students explore value structure, edge hierarchy, proportion, and perspective using titanium white and ivory black. Techniques covered include wet-on-wet, scumbling, and impasto, with emphasis on pre-mixing palettes and understanding paint application. Through step-by-step demonstrations, Melanie connects core drawing skills to painting practices, guiding students in rendering volume, light, and depth. The course culminates in a full composition, equipping students with foundational painting knowledge to support future work in both two- and three-dimensional media.

  • Monochromatic painting techniques

  • Value and edge control

  • Drawing-to-painting application

  • Proportion and perspective focus

  • Brushwork and texture methods

  • Complete composition creation

Instructor

Melanie Berardicelli

Instructor

Melanie Berardicelli is a SURP and CE Painting Professor at the New York Academy of Art. She has been an educator of the fine arts since 2014, teaching painting and drawing, life drawing, sculpture, and art history classes at Ivy League School in Smithtown and USDAN Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. Melanie received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the New York Academy of Art in May 2021 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing at SUNY New Paltz in 2017. Melanie’s artwork explores the spark felt when entering the sacred space of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the history of the Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints; her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout New York State, including The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Sotheby’s, Cryptic Gallery, Greenpoint Gallery, Upstream Gallery, The Huntington Arts Council, and The New York Academy of Art. Currently, Melanie assists artist Audrey Flack in her New York and East Hampton studio locations, creating the underpaintings and sculptures for Flack’s current Post-Pop Baroque series. Melanie is also children’s book illustrator. Her work for Augie Goes to the Library- a 48-page commemoration to the New Paltz community and the titular Border Collie- was published in 2016.

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