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Make paintings that exist only in your head
You have the idea… Now what?
You've seen it a hundred times in your head, an idea like a little candle flame. Weird and specific and completely yours. Then you pick up the brush and it comes out flat. Muddy. Wrong. Somewhere between the vision and the canvas it just... dies. Fml then, am I right?
Maybe you've been stuck in the ugly stage so long you've started believing that's just where your painting lives now. Maybe you don't even have the technique yet to know what glazing or sfumato could do for you, so "realistic" feels like a locked door with some fancy old oil painter's name on it.
But imagine actually finishing the strange thing you set out to make. Recognisable. Convincing. Yours, on canvas, exactly as haunting or tender or ridiculous as it was in your head. I’d like to help you cross that gap (it’s the most satisfying leap you’ll ever make!)🎨
Meet your instructor
Hey, I'm Amber!
@amberskyealcock
I make surrealist paintings that use animals as vessels for very human issues: things we'd rather look away from, sometimes strange, sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable.
For a long time, I thought being a good painter was about aesthetics alone. So I painted pretty things.
And while there is nothing inherently wrong with watercolour flowers or a landscape piece, I eventually realised that I wanted more. Fine art is subversive, controversial, challenging.
I had ideas for paintings that were surreal, symbolic, funny and unsettling. Learning the technical side of painting changed the game for me.
I discovered that realism and imagination aren't opposites. They can, in fact, be bedfellows if you know how to use both in the right ways.
In this course, I'll walk you through my entire process, from that first spark of an idea to a finished painting.
Hear it from the source
What my people say about my art
YOUR STRANGEST IDEAS BELONG ON CANVAS
Make Believe is the course I wish I'd had when I was trying to figure all of this out.
I teach the way I wish someone had taught me. No pretending the ugly stage doesn't exist. No shame about liking odd shit. Just the actual technical groundwork underneath the images that live in your head, so they finally look as convincing as they feel to you. ✨ I want to resurrect your confidence and breathe life into your paintings.
We’ll work through the creative and technical process from beginning to end, combining age-old techniques with modern practicalities. We’ll wait six months for our phthalo blue to come from Italy via sailboat and then another two years for it to dry properly because all we have is linseed oil… just kidding. We’ve got contemporary hue pigments now and mediums that will dry it in two days oh yeaaaah. You will be able to take an idea that exists only in your imagination and give it structure, light, form, colour and, eventually, a life of its own.
And yes, we will have to go through the ugly stage.
I’m afraid there is no avoiding it. Dammit.
Your future skills
Your new superpowers (paint-stained, obviously)
Develop ideas you actually want to paint
Learn how I generate and develop ideas, work from fragments and references, and turn seemingly unrelated images into something with its own visual logic.
Stop fearing the ugly stage
No more abandoning a painting halfway because it looks rough and wrong. You'll recognise the ugly stage for what it is: a normal, temporary part of the process, and keep going anyway.
Master the visual language of symbolism
People can read the visual arts without training of any kind, even if they think they ‘know nothing about art.’ While art is highly subjective, there is also something deeper and more instinctual about how the human eye looks at images. You will learn to wield the visual tool of symbolism.
Look inside the COURSE
Course outline
Make Believe has 8 modules and over 7 hours of learning and painting along, including a full-length painting tutorial from start to finish. Pause it, replay it, argue with it, shout at it, whatever you need. It works for teens, adults and anyone else with strange ideas, and there's no explicit content (except perhaps an occasional gentle swear from me, my bad lol).
You'll learn the tools, the workflow and the decisions I actually use in my own practice, from the first spark of ‘but like what if a chihuahua ended up on the Raft of the Medusa and cannibalism was hinted at’ to a finished painting.
Introduction and 'live' brainstorming session
We start inside my head, which is a strange place to be, trust me. Watch me actually brainstorm, in real time, so you can steal the process. If you've ever stared at a blank canvas with a hundred half-formed ideas, this is where they finally get sorted into something paintable.
ABOUT THE COURSE
Course platform
Every lesson lives in Full HD, so you can actually see what glazing looks like layer by layer, not a blurry approximation.
Going slow to study a stroke? Slow the video down. Confident and want to move? Speed it up. Rubbish internet some days? Drop the quality and keep painting anyway.
No studio deadlines here. This is entirely self-paced: watch at 6 am or midnight, and every video is yours to rewatch forever, as many times as your ugly stage demands.
Works on your phone, tablet, whatever's nearby when the idea hits. And you're never figuring it out completely alone. Come with questions, come with weird half-finished ideas. We paint through it together.
JOIN NOWALL this is inside
Included in the course
Quick gut check
This is for you if...
If most of these feel like a soft yes, you're exactly who I built this course for.
♥︎ You've got a list of weird painting ideas saved somewhere and no idea how to actually start one.
♥︎ You can sketch something fine but it falls apart the second you try to make it look real.
♥︎ You've tried teaching yourself realism from scattered YouTube videos and ended up more lost than when you started.
♥︎ You like old master techniques but don't have the time or patience to do it their way.
♥︎ You're a little lazy, honestly, and want the process streamlined.
♥︎ You want your strangest ideas to be taken seriously because they're painted so damn well.
AND THERE IS MORE
The things I wish someone had given me
Free bonus materials (yaaay)
The Full Technique Workbook
A downloadable guide covering the tools, materials and techniques used throughout the course, so you can refer back to them without scrubbing through seven hours of video trying to remember which brush I used.
VALUE: $19
FREE
The Technique Library
The history and background of the techniques we use: where they came from, why artists developed them, and how I have adapted them to suit my own way of painting.
Because I think knowing why something works makes it much easier to make it your own.
VALUE: $19
FREE
Reference & Photo-Bashing Materials
Resources to help you experiment with creating your own imagined scenes and compositions rather than simply copying what is already in front of you.
VALUE: $19
FREE
REGISTRATIONS ARE CLOSING SOON!
DISCOVER HOW YOUR STRANGEST IDEAS LOOK IN REAL LIFE
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GET IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO
Special Payment Option
I wanted to make the course more accessible, so I’m offering a six-month payment plan to help spread out the cost. The course content is exactly the same; this allows you to spread the investment over time in a way that feels more comfortable for you. The price displayed below is in US dollars, but you can pay with ANY currency. Let's paint together woohoo. ✨
MY GUARANTEE TO YOU
Try out the course with a 14-day money-back guarantee
Let's be straight with each other, because that's how I'd want it done to me. I stand by the quality of the course. I poured all my knowledge and experience into it, exactly how I wish I'd had it when I started.
You are welcome to join, look around, watch a few lessons, and if this course isn't for you, for whatever reason, you've got 14 days to get every cent back. Zero risk. Give it an honest shot.
GOT ANY QUESTIONS?
