What’s in a Name?

Names are curious things. They begin as labels, then quietly become assumptions.

For a long time, The Oils Programme has done exactly what it says on the tin. It has taught oil painting, seriously, thoroughly, and with a proper respect for the craft. But over time, something slightly awkward has crept in. The name has stayed put, while the reality of what we teach has… stretched.

Because the truth is this: most of what we teach on TOP has never really been just about oil paint alone.

It’s about how paintings work.

It’s about structure, decision making, colour relationships, value, composition, and the slow business of turning intention into something visible. Those things don’t only belong to oil.

Oil is just one very good vehicle for them. Acrylic can do all of it. Watercolour can do much it. Different handling, different speeds, different quirks, but the underlying thinking travels remarkably well.

And so the name The Oils Programme has started to feel a little too narrow for what is, in practice, a much broader way of learning to paint.

So, we’re changing it.

The Oils Programme is becoming The Painting Programme, or TPP.

It’s not quite as neat a piece of shorthand as TOP, which had a certain satisfying snap to it. TPP is perhaps a little more… earnest. But it has one very important virtue: it says what we actually do.

Nothing else changes.

The structure remains the same.The projects remain the same.The teaching remains the same.The community remains exactly as it is.

If anything, this is less a change than an admission. An acknowledgement that many of you are already applying what you learn in oil to other media, and doing so very successfully. The new name simply catches up with that reality.

One thing is staying exactly as it was.

Advanced Oils remains Advanced Oils.

That part of the programme is unapologetically specific. It deals with the more technical, material heavy side of oil painting, the particular behaviours of the medium, its possibilities, its stubbornness, its odd chemistry. It’s for those who want to go deep into oil as a material, it's Martin's home turf, and it will stay firmly rooted there.

But the core programme, now The Painting Programme, is where the wider language of painting sits and to be honest has always sat. Oil, acrylic, watercolour, whatever you choose to use, the aim is the same: to help you make better paintings, with more clarity, more control, and more confidence in your decisions.

So yes, a new name.

But really, just a clearer one.