6 Hour Portraits - A Fast and Loose Approach to Portrait Drawing and Painting

Open to both drawing and painting!

This class acts as a way for students to learn about the complete process of portrait drawing/painting loosely and quickly in a painterly way, helping them see the whole process play out organically over a short period of time. It also allows students who have done portraits before to sharpen their skills under a time crunch and work more intuitively and organically, blending stages together that they already know. 

Students will spend two weeks on each portrait, for a total of 6 portraits. The first 2 weeks will be drawing only, allowing students to familiarize themselves with all the fundamental concepts, such as planes, values, comparative measurement, etc. In week 3, students can either continue drawing or transition to paint using the same method and concepts that were taught in the first 2 weeks. 

To aid in this fast and loose approach, students will work with any and all tools: blending stumps, our fingers, pencil erasers, graphite powder, and a range of pencils. 

Throughout the class, a heavy emphasis will be put on the structure of a portrait from an anatomical standpoint and how this relates to form, giving students an understanding of what they are looking at. This will include the structure of the skull, the planes of the face, and the shape and structure of the features of the face.

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