Portrait Drawing Course week 1

Today I began a portrait drawing course at the SCCC under Pina Bartolo's tutelage. I've recently begun some portraits but struggled to get a likeness and thought that it would be great to get some direction/ ideas from a professional.

There are 16 persons in the class which made it very crowded. It probably is not possible to do painting given the space constraints. It would be nice if we could, though. There are easels everywhere and Pina could hardly move around the room.
Our model is Olivia who is of possibly hispanic background. Olivia is beautiful but in a sulky way. Her expression at rest is one who is comtemplating some minor grievance... although I am sure she is a nice a person, really.
Today's lesson is to get the structure right. Because we focus so much on features in other people, it is a bit of a struggle to draw them because we immediately dive into drawing the features. In reality features take only a small percentage of the head. To make it look realistic, we have to draw the shapes of the head, neck and shoulders convincingly or else it does not look plausible. This is a similar lesson to that in life drawing - geometry first to 'set the scene'.

Drawings from the SCCC Course

I enrolled in September 2008 at a life drawing course at the SCCC, having finally found the opportunity to do something for myself amidst responsibilities with work and family. This was the catalyst to rekindle my interest in visual arts. My tutor, David Wilsher was great. Very encouraging and gave me some new techniques to try. In the beginning, I was of course, not very good at all. But slowly, I discovered my preferred style and was even confident enough to attempt very foreshortened poses.

Drawings of my family

Over the last 4 months I have been drawing my family wherever the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, it is not so straight forward to draw my 5 year old daughter who does not stay still much. I've had to photograph her first before drawing. Of course my spouse is not exempt. But as he seems to spend much of his time in front of the TV or sleeping, it is not as hard. The other life drawing opportunity I get with my daughter is of course, when she is asleep as well, but funnily they sense you are looking at them and wake up to ask you what you are doing. My mother-in-law, who turns 80 this year still looks terrific and is very sprightly. She said she would sit for a portrait, so I drew this as a study, intending to take her up on her offer.

Life Drawings from the Art House Hotel

Art House Hotel The most recent life drawing was with Catherine earlier this year, when we both went to the Art House Hotel, paid our $3 for a life drawing session. The model was a petite lady, but muscular. At the Art House, it appears that the model dictates how long each pose was held. She was obviously not an artist herself because she did something like 20 x 2 minute poses as a warm up. We were not just warmed up, it was too frantic for us to get anywhere. Subsequently, she did some 5 min poses followed by some 10 min poses. These were better for me, although no less intense because of the concentration required to capture something in the very short time. I was quite pleased with the results although I left feeling somewhat exhausted. Some experienced artists did quite well but I will not be going back for this model again!

Red nude - an attempt at composition

This painting was done from a sketch at the NAS course and a late inclusion to the blog. I was attempting to get a good composition - the shadows at the back are the easels of the students. Lying down poses are generally difficult to get right and I struggled with this picture.

Portrait in red and green

My friend Eunice has masses of lovely red hair which I was always itching to capture. She has the pale complexion found in redheads but no freckles! Lucky lady. Anyway, Eunice obligingly posed for a portrait.

Because of her red hair, I decided that a yellow-violet combination would not go as well as a red-green colour scheme. I did this over a few hours and painting is so much easier than drawing when it comes to portrait because if it doesn't fit, just paint over it! Erasing drawings is messy and leave smudges.

When I showed this to my 5 year old, she identified Eunice enthusiastically and immediately and when I asked if it was because of the red hair, she agreed but then added that other things 'looked like Eunice'. Eunice thinks that a 5 year old will always be honest.

further painting experiments after NAS

Working large From the course at NAS I observed my classmates painting on huge canvases and wow! It sure has a dramatic impact. So my next venture was to try the same. Using a photo of Linda, I worked on this A0 size canvas. What I realized was 1. Composition is vital. You can't crop a mounted canvas - well, not easily at any rate. So if the picture is odd, best to redraw. This composition had the figure looking to the right so more blank space was required to this side. 2. A large canvas demands large brushes otherwise it gets too detailed and slow. It isn't easy to have confident brush strokes if the biggest brush you had only makes only a thin line. 3. A good memory of paint mixes is crucial as work is done in several discrete stages - not so good if you could not match the colour again. More repainting then! Here is the results: I has to make the ear and hands much larger after the paints dried as I realized how small they looked. I think the larger brush strokes would have resulted in a more spontaneous painting but my daughter liked the results anyway. "Mummy, don't sell or give away the lady in the hat..."