This is a fun activity in Edinburgh
Love Edinburgh’s streets and skylines, Flowers or something in your mind? Spend a couple of hours seeing them through colour.
Join AshLab in Corstorphine for an approachable introduction to oil painting, guided by artist Le Liu. This two-hour workshop is a lovely way to try a new medium, spend creative time with a friend or enjoy an afternoon doing something for yourself.
We’ll use Edinburgh-inspired reference images as a starting point and help you turn a scene into manageable shapes and colours. You don’t need to draw every window or get every line perfectly straight.
Your tutor will introduce the materials, demonstrate how to mix colours and show you how to build a painting with simple blocks of light and shade. You’ll then develop your own small painting, with guidance throughout.
Explore the character of a building, the colours of a street or the atmosphere of a Scottish sky. Follow the reference closely or make the colours and brushwork your own.
By the end, you’ll have tried the essentials of oil painting and created a personal response to the city. It’s a satisfying first step if you’ve always wanted to paint but felt unsure where to begin.
What you’ll learn
• How to get started with oil paints and brushes.
• Mixing colours and adjusting light and dark.
• Simplifying a scene into shapes.
• Building your painting with expressive brushwork.
Meet your teacher: Ash Lab Art Studio is co-founded by two professional artists working and exhibiting across the UK. Le Liu holds an MLitt in Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art, has exhibited at the Barbican, the 5th London Art Biennial, and Transmission Gallery Glasgow, and was selected for Saatchi Art's 2026 Rising Stars feature from over 2, 000 submissions. Their practice comes straight into the teaching room – what they teach is exactly how they work.
