ERIC JACOBSEN
BOLD & LOOSE:
PAINTING NATURE
WITH CONFIDENCE

Eric Jacobsen
MENTORING MEMBERSHIP

(Billed annually • Save $125 vs monthly)

(Cancel or pause anytime)

WHAT’S INSIDE

This membership gives you full access to Eric Jacobsen’s “Bold & Loose: Painting Nature with Confidence” course experience, along with ongoing mentoring designed to help you loosen up, simplify your approach, and create paintings that feel alive, intentional, and expressive.

The focus is not on copying a scene exactly. It’s on painting the impression.

Many artists struggle with paintings that feel tight, overworked, or overly busy. You look up at the landscape, see something interesting, and immediately try to put it in. Then you see something else—and add that too. Before long, every square inch has equal activity. There’s no clear focal point. The eye has nowhere to rest.

Busyness is not a principle of painting.

Inside this course, Eric shows you how to break that cycle. You’ll learn how bold, loose painting is not about being careless—it’s about being intentional. It’s about deciding where the activity belongs and where the painting needs quiet. By understanding active and passive areas, you begin to control movement instead of reacting to everything you see.

You’ll explore how simplifying shapes strengthens design, how organizing values creates clarity, and how adding darks can make your lights feel more luminous. Instead of chasing detail, you’ll learn to group, edit, and rearrange nature so the painting communicates a feeling.

Eric’s approach emphasizes confident brushwork and purposeful mark making. You’ll work with mass, line, and dot to create variety. You’ll see how thick and thin paint, palette knife passages, and varied surface quality add rhythm and vitality. Rather than polishing every edge, you’ll learn when to soften, when to sharpen, and when to let a stroke stand.

Painting becomes less about control and more about thoughtful decisions. You’ll correct shapes, adjust values, push warm and cool relationships, and refine design—without losing freshness. You’ll stop trying to prove you can render everything and start focusing on what the painting is about.

And just as importantly, you’ll be encouraged to paint to please yourself—to express how you feel about the scene rather than trying to satisfy everyone else. Bold and loose is not a style trick. It’s a mindset shift.

There is no fixed timeline. You can revisit lessons, deepen your understanding, and continue refining your approach as you grow.

Your access to Eric’s mentoring and course material continues as long as you remain an active member through a yearly or monthly membership option.

By embracing the impression over the replica, you gain the confidence to simplify, to design with strength, and to paint with boldness and freedom—creating work that feels natural, expressive, and full of life.

MODULE 1 | Composition

We have all heard the saying, “Composition is king” or something along these lines...and it’s true. No course on painting would be complete without touching on this subject. Another word for composition is design. Simply put, it is the layout of basic color shapes into a pleasing arrangement. In our time together, I will discuss and demonstrate how to simplify a scene and break it down into it’s basic shapes. I will also demonstrate how to edit and arrange the landscape in order to create a dynamic yet balanced picture. It’s easier than you think and requires only a basic knowledge of design and the rules of composition.

MODULE 2 | VALUE

Value is often overlooked in favor of color... in fact the two are interconnected...value is a property of color. Every color has a value. It is either lighter or darker than the color next to it. We use value to convey a sense of light and form, in this module I will encourage you all to focus on value first and then color. I will also encourage you to choose subject matter that has a wide value range so as to create a powerful light effect and strong form.

MODULE 3 | COLOR

There is much that can be said about color. In fact it’s the thing that most folks think of first, when they think of painting. In this course we will discuss the properties of color and the importance of color relationship. Color relationship is what painting is all about. I will encourage you to let go of the exact color of things in nature and to stop copying tone for tone and color for color, but instead, focus on relating colors by considering their hue, value, and temperature. This way of seeing and comparing is vital for the landscape painter.

MODULE 4 | Mark Making

A key element to creating interesting and exciting paintings in any style is mark making. As painters, we are mark makers. We create the scene before us with pieces of paint laid down by brush, knife, rag, etc... I’ll address the importance of using a variety of mark making techniques to convey the feeling of the landscape. Throughout our time together, I will encourage you all to be playful and experiment with your mark making

SUGGESTED SUPPLY LIST

{Although Eric has a preference for oil paint, he is happy to help students explore and work with their preferred medium, whether it's acrylics, gouache pastels, or watercolors.}

BONUS | PAINTING THE IMPRESSION

Only students in this course receive this special bonus video - it’s not available for purchase anywhere.

In this 60 minute start-to-finish painting demonstration, Eric shares how to explore the essential tools and techniques for creating dynamic landscapes, including various brushes and palette knives. Discover the importance of a well-chosen color palette and the benefits of painting over previous works. Learn how to establish composition with a two-thirds sky and one-third land ratio while emphasizing value and temperature for depth. The video highlights the use of texture and the significance of clean color mixing and encourages a loose, expressive painting style. Final touches focus on refining details and achieving a cohesive composition, making the process both engaging and informative.

You can download and save this video in a safe place. It's yours to keep as a takeaway when your course access ends.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

Whether you’re just starting out or an established artist, this course is packed with everything you need to elevate your work and achieve your artistic goals.

• Ongoing Mentoring with Eric Jacobsen

  This is not a short-term workshop or a one-off class. Mentoring is delivered through an ongoing membership, giving you continued access to Eric’s bold, expressive techniques and disciplined mark making as long as you remain enrolled.
  
  The emphasis is on building strength in the areas that actually make a painting work. Eric repeatedly teaches that you are not there to copy the scene exactly. You are there to get an impression of it, organize it, and make a statement about it. That requires controlling value before being distracted by color, pushing warm and cool intentionally, grouping shapes for stronger design, and creating areas of activity and rest so the eye moves naturally through the painting.
  
  This membership exists to address those struggles directly. Eric teaches you how to strengthen darks so light feels convincing, how to simplify overworked passages, how to soften edges so forms move and breathe, and how to make corrections without losing freshness.
  

• Learn at Your Own Pace

  All instruction is delivered through professionally recorded videos, allowing you to learn when and where it suits you. You can pause during demonstrations, revisit discussions on value and temperature, and return to lessons on mark making or paint handling as your understanding deepens.
  

  Your access remains active as long as your membership is active, so learning unfolds naturally alongside your painting practice. There is no expiration and no pressure to rush. Growth happens through repetition, observation, correction, and thoughtful application.
  
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• Over-the-Shoulder Demonstrations

  You gain access to 20 hours of in-depth oil painting demonstrations where Eric paints the way he actually paints. You see him tone the surface, establish strong value relationships early, map out middle points, and design the composition rather than copying the reference exactly.

  During these sessions, he adjusts trees that become too repetitive, darkens passages to create more convincing light, floats a palette knife across the surface to quiet busy areas, and pushes warm and cool relationships to separate planes. He discusses brush handling, thick and thin paint, mass, line, and dot, and how to use variety in mark making to create visual interest.

  These demonstrations show not only what Eric does, but why he does it. You observe the problem-solving process in real time, including the corrections that strengthen the painting as it develops.
  

• Ongoing Additions & Growing Library

  As a member, you gain access to an expanding library of recorded lessons and demonstrations. Topics include active and passive areas in painting, adding darks to create light, analyzing master paintings for mark making, brushwork mechanics, the benefits of using a painting medium, paint thickness and surface control, and painting the impression rather than copying detail.

  All previously released material remains available while you are enrolled. This growing archive allows you to revisit concepts as your sensitivity to value, temperature, edges, and paint quality increases over time.
  

• A Private, Focused Community — No Social Media

  The membership includes access to a private community built directly into your account. This space is designed specifically for painters who want thoughtful growth without distraction. There are no social media feeds competing for attention. The focus remains on painting and improvement.

  Here, you’ll connect with Eric and fellow members, share your work, ask questions, and engage in thoughtful discussion focused entirely on painting and growth.
  

• Community Guidance Led by Eric

  As part of the membership, you gain insight into how an experienced painter thinks about loose and bold painting structure. You see how Eric diagnoses value imbalances, simplifies cluttered passages, strengthens focal points by controlling activity, and adjusts temperature shifts to create depth.

  The purpose is not simply commentary on your shared paintings, it is access to Eric’s reasoning behind decisions—the disciplined thinking that allows a painting to move from scattered and uncertain to organized and convincing. Over time, this way of thinking becomes part of your own process.
  

• AI-Powered Course Search

  The course includes an AI-powered search tool built entirely from Eric’s own videos and teaching content. When you ask a question, the system locates the exact moment in the course where that topic is discussed.

  You can watch the video or read the transcript—saving time and helping you get straight to the information you need, when you need it.
  

• Extensive Archive of Past Critiques

  Members receive access to a deep archive of recorded teaching sessions that address common painting challenges. These sessions explore real issues such as over-detailing, weak value range, hard edges that disrupt movement, and compositions that lack clear focal structure.

  Watching Eric’s corrections happen in real time sharpens your eye. As you see structure restored, dark values strengthened, and busy areas quieted, you begin to recognize those same issues in your own work earlier in the process.
  

DISCOVER WHY THIS COURSE IS DIFFERENT!

This is mentoring for painters who are serious about getting better — not just staying busy.

If you are tired of paintings that feel uncertain, muddy, or overworked… if you know you’re capable of more but don’t yet have the structure to achieve it consistently… this is where that changes.

This membership is built around disciplined thinking, intentional design, and the bold expressive principles that make a painting hold together. You won’t be chasing shortcuts or temporary inspiration. You’ll be building real strength — clearer values, stronger light, purposeful warm and cool relationships, controlled edges, and confident mark making. Over time, your decisions become sharper. Your corrections become smaller. Your paintings begin to feel organized, deliberate, and alive.

Because this is membership-based mentoring, you’re not pressured to rush through material before access ends. You can revisit lessons, reinforce concepts, and allow your understanding to deepen naturally for as long as you remain an active member. There is no expiration date — your progress continues at your pace.

If you want lasting improvement — the kind that shows up every time you step to the easel — this is where you begin.

Eric Jacobsen
MENTORING MEMBERSHIP

(Billed annually • Save $125 vs monthly)

(Cancel or pause anytime)