Course details
How do you paint realistic portraits with great accuracy and detail? Learn how to master light and shadow and the basics of the classical sight size technique.
Artist, Emily Roberts who trained at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence has been teaching and mastering the art of portrait painting for many years and will be sharing all she knows with you in the studio over four days.
The emphasis of the approach for this course is on light and shadow, so that, while structural accuracy is important, anatomy is only touched upon; the approach is visual.
Explore ways to make a charcoal drawing with an emphasis on creating contour and isolating light and shadow shapes. Emily will provide an example of each stage of the drawing and painting process as the course progresses. She will show you how to transfer a drawing to canvas and start painting in oils, using traditional mediums to layer paint and build up colour, using the model as a constant reference. You will be working from a live model for all four days of the course.
The aim is to come away from the course with an introduction to the sight size technique, knowledge of traditional approaches to charcoal portrait drawing and an introduction to mixing using a limited palette, as well as a firm grounding in searching for the light flow on a subject. By the end of the session you will take away a charcoal drawing on paper and a 30x40cm painting on canvas.
Emily’s approach to teaching is one of mutual discovery. She always works alongside the student in order to guide and move through obstacles together. The basis of the method that she use is very step by step, offering guidance to those with less experience, but allows for personal expression and the touch of the individual to shine through.
What will I learn?
- An introduction into the sight size technique
- How to find light flow on a subject and create subtle transitions from light to shadow
- Traditional approaches to charcoal drawing
- Transferring a drawing to canvas
- Colour mixing using a limited palette of oil paints
Who would this course suit?
This course would suit any interested student with any level of experience. The technique is very ‘step-by-step’, so even students with no background in drawing or painting will be pleased with their progress. Those with experience of life drawing or portraiture will enjoy this in depth exploration into a historic technique, and those looking to tweak their current practice may find elements of the approach beneficial.
Ahead of your oil painting course with us if you would like to brush up your skills, you are entitled to 25% off our online “Getting Started with Oil Painting” course here. You will be given a code after purchasing our studio oil painting course.
Our studio ‘Beginner’s Oil Painting’ courses can be found here.
Taught by
What to Bring
Our studios are fully equipped and we provide you with all the materials you need for your course. However, if you have a favourite set of brushes or any specialist materials that you would prefer to use, please bring them with you.
Timings and Breaks
The first day starts at 10am and finishes at 4.30pm, please aim to arrive ten to fifteen minutes before the start time.
All course days after that start at 9.30am and finish at 4pm and there will be an hour for lunch. There are plenty of nearby places to eat and we will serve tea and coffee at break times during the day.
What our students say
I thought the course was thoughtfully structured and the process was really helpful to understand the fundamentals. I was initially reticent to the idea of two days of sketching but found that it really helped me hone in on the details and move towards painting the portrait with a lot of the structure, composition, tonal range, thought out.
Emily was great – incredibly helpful, concise feedback and strategy. Just brilliant.
Excellent teacher!
Approachable teacher, informal and friendly.
FAQs
You might also like...
Figure - The Folded Line
Tom Rickman
Join artist Tom Rickman for this exploration of folded material on the human form. Working from a model learn how drapery not only covers or reveals but animates and extends the body in this online webinar.
Line, Texture, Tone - Coldwax Painting
Laura Menzies
Enjoy creating luminous abstract paintings using coldwax painting. Learn how these three fundamental aspects - texture, line and shape - can help develop your unique visual vocabulary.
Postcards from St Ives - Barbara Hepworth's Drawings (recording)
Hilary Jean Gibson
Following the major retrospective of Barbara Hepworth's work at Tate St Ives, join us for this Hepworth-inspired webinar using the artist's remarkable series of drawings as a starting point.
Postcards from St Ives - Victor Pasmore, Line + Space
Hilary Jean Gibson
Capture the Cornish landscape in simplified shapes, lines and motifs in this Victor Pasmore inspired recording. See how this seminal artist pioneered a new way of working with abstraction.
Expressive Landscape in Oils
Mon 21 Sep - 3 hour(s)
Greg Humphries
Explore the colour, movement and atmosphere of St Ives through plein air studies and expressive studio oil painting.
Colour + Landscape in Oils
Martha Holmes
Join artist Martha Holmes for this two part course on oils following her sell out show at The New Craftsman Gallery, St Ives, Between Land and Sea.
Coldwax Painting
Laura Menzies
Enjoy learning about the possibilities of coldwax painting, a technique for adding texture and depth to your work.