The studio
Painter first, teacher by accident.
It started with one neighbour and a kitchen table, and grew slowly into a proper Paddington studio.
The room on an ordinary Tuesday.
A tutor’s hands at the easel. Demo photo, not a portrait of Mara.
Who teaches
A neighbour asked for help with skies.
One Tuesday lesson became six, her pages went from muddy to luminous, and strangers started asking for the same thing. The studio grew out of that kitchen table, one small class at a time.
Mara Ellis teaches every class herself. Nothing here is a video recorded once and replayed: if you are in the room, you are getting looked at, and the page in front of you gets a real answer.
How Mara teaches
Four promises to every student
The rules the studio runs on, whichever course you pick.
Process over product
You are marked on pages filled, never on frames earned.
Small classes
Ten seats at most, so everyone in the room gets looked at.
Honest critique
Kind, specific, and about the page in front of us, never a template reply.
A materials list, not a shopping list
Every lesson works with a starter palette. A supply list goes out on booking, well before the first class.
From the studio
A term in the studio
Pages, not paintings: a few spreads from an ordinary week.
Paint from lifeA still life set up fresh most weeks: fruit, pottery, whatever the light is doing that day.
Room for tenEasels spaced properly, so nobody is painting over anybody’s shoulder.
The wash
Between classes
The studio in numbers
Small on purpose.
These figures have not moved since the studio opened its own door, and that is deliberate.
Teaching in Paddington since
Seats in a class, at most
Courses on offer
Find the studio
The Open Sketchbook, Paddington
A short walk from Latrobe Terrace, in a converted Queenslander cottage. Street parking, and the Paddington bus routes stop close by.
Phone 07 2150 3678 · Email hello@opensketchbook.demo
Address Paddington, Brisbane. The full address is emailed when you enrol.
There is usually a seat left in the next term.
Classes are small on purpose, so the earlier you ask, the better the chance.
Next course starts Tue 3 Nov · $220 · up to 10 seats demo date
Next: Tue 3 Nov · $220