This workshop will teach students how to quickly draw portraits in an open, loose, way. It serves both beginners who want to see a complete portrait process play out organically over a short period of time, and tenured students who want to sharpen their skills under a time crunch whilst working more intuitively, allowing them to blend stages together. We are not looking for a highly finished drawing, but one that conveys the forms we are looking at in an expressive manner. To achieve this, we need a variety of strokes, and a variety of tools, working with our fingers, blending stumps, pencil erasers, kneaded erasers, and different grades of pencils. 

Day 1 will begin with a demo outlining the stages the portraits will go through. Students will begin by linearly laying in the major contour lines of the head and proceed to mass in values softly and flatly. Once general proportions and feature locations have been correctly placed more values will be added, whilst still keeping things soft. Over time, students will darken and sharpen areas bringing up the drawing as a whole until each part has been fully realized. 

Students will do at  least one portrait each day, maybe more depending on the time.

John’s method includes one on one critiques and demos. 

Dates: 01/03/26 - 01/04/26, 9:30 - 4:30