The first year consists of basic practice (elective classes) in and a fresh look at the act of pictorial representation. In depicting still-life objects and the human form as we see them, drawing lines using the natural rhythm of the body, students will discover the enjoyment of depicting and making things.

Students select courses from the curriculum set by the teaching staff. The second year is an extension of the above curriculum, however with art history as the frame of reference throughout, students endeavor to consider their own creative work within the context of art history.

From the third year, studies in the Department split broadly into two courses - Painting A and Painting B - and students enter a phase of preparation for more specialized forms of expression. While in the first and second years the painting courses consist primarily of instruction by the teaching staff, from the third year the program is designed to help each student grow and attain creative independence in his or her own way.

Up to their second year, students are assigned issues and motifs in art history and painting as stimuli for their work; however, in the A course from the third year onward, they begin to develop a more individual subjectivity. Students search for motifs, assemble their own images, and learn ways to express themselves via a process of trial and error. In this course, they delve deeply into their own identities, explore the nature of painting in different modes of expression, not only representational, and build the foundations for expressing themselves as individuals.

Painting has undergone numerous metamorphoses as the world has changed, emerging in many different forms over time. In the B course, students explore this process, focusing on why people have transformed painting in so many ways?in other words on the drive to create new art forms?and start by immersing themselves in this dynamism. Students take a position that objectifies history and confronts it in order to create new kinds of value. They may be swayed by their existing values, find themselves unable to touch the canvas, or need to divorce themselves from painting in order to express painting. The aim is to open up new creative horizons by engaging in a repeated process of trial and error, and building on each act of expression.

Working on graduation projects encourages close communication between tutors and students, and among students in the classroom situation. This communication combines with friendly rivalry among students to add major impetus to project activity.

As well as touching on printmaking, students acquire the basics of painting by depicting still-life objects and the human form on media such as paper and canvas. Woodblock and copperplate are required subjects.

While focusing on the basics of the formative arts in a continuation of the first year, students begin to develop their own ideas about printmaking to facilitate their progression to print expression. Lithography and silkscreen are required subjects.

The fascination of printmaking lies in encountering possibilities for new kinds of expression and discovering one's own distinctive style through experience acquired in the process of printmaking, such as making plates and handmade paper. Following experience of printmaking in their first and second years, from the third year, classes concentrate on print production involving more specialized techniques. The curriculum allows students to select and major in one form of printmaking after trying their hand at four types: lithograph, woodblock, copperplate and silkscreen.

Ahead of the graduation projects, work by students studying together is collected into a single volume of prints. In their work for graduation, each student establishes a style of expression that presents their philosophy on prints and print production.