Painting The Portrait With A Background in Oils

In this five-day painting workshop students will paint the portrait from observation of the live model, working in traditional oil colors. Focus will be on achieving naturalistic skin tones, three-dimensional lighting effects, glazing, scumbling as well as expressive use of color.  In addition, there will be a complex landscape and or imaginary background to abstract colors and forms from and practice painting in a looser way.  The backgrounds will be individual and specific to each student’s imagination, with techniques relying on dreams, surrealism, plein air techniques and or photographic reference.

There will be daily painting demonstrations by the instructor, for 3 hours each morning. We will be painting from life with a model for you to work from. You may expect art talks and individualized critiques that will focus on materials, techniques, process, and artistic vision.  The class will also cover the palette with brush/palette knife color mixing.

The idea is to get you jazzed up about painting, more proficient with portrait painting, composition and imaginative realism. This class will help point you critically in the right directions and help you on an individual level as well.