Join award-winning portrait artist Mathew Lynn as he introduces you to the fundamentals of portraiture, or helps you to consolidate your existing portrait practice. For beginners, this will be a workshop designed to give you a very strong grounding in what you need to make portrait drawing and painting not just completely comprehensible, but also fun! - with step-by-step processes to help you build your understanding and your confidence at a pace that suites you. For those with some experience, Mathew will help you to expand your understanding and insight with what is possible in the portrait form.
Mathew will start by encouraging a lively discussion on the history of portraiture, from the great Egyptian Fayum portraits all the way to the contemporary. This will give everyone a chance to share their experience, discoveries and insights.
He will then give a brief overview of portrait drawing techniques and the importance of preliminary sketches to help you understand composition, proportions and facial features. He will also discuss how to achieve likeness and personality. Some students may like to explore contemporary approaches, looking at ways to transform their traditional practice. Mathew can help you with processes to explore this.
Please bring in a number of A4 prints of faces and people that appeal to you, Mathew can also help you choose the best to work from. You can also bring your images on a tablet. Make sure the images are on your phone as well, in case we need to print them again, or make crops for optimal compositions! You can also bring in existing works for help and guidance.
For beginners, Mathew will take you through a step-by-step process of drawing techniques to help you understand your portrait composition, including proportions and features, starting with basic line drawing and shapes, and then adding shading, and the use of rubbing out for adjustments. He will also discuss the use of grids, and other techniques to help you transfer information from your images to your drawing, and on to your painting surface.
For everyone, Mathew will go on to discuss colour mixing and tones, and the important pigments to use for portraits so you can have complete control over your flesh tones. He will also discuss various painting techniques, including blocking in and refinement with erasure, building up body to achieve the quality of flesh, understanding the different textures of the face and head, and how to replicate them with a variety of brush techniques.
Mathew will also give a painting demonstration in the afternoon to explain the techniques he has discussed.
This workshop will be a great chance for you to establish a strong set of portrait skills that can give you confidence when you want to push yourself with something more challenging, and Mathew’s workshops are always a place for lively conversation and encouragement from fellow students!
Materials
Drawing & Studies
• A4 Sketchbook or paper
• Pencils - bring in a range such as H, B, 2B, 6B
• Staedtler rubber (we will also trim this into wedges for precision removals)
• Knife for sharpening
• 30cm Ruler (only if you think you’d like to use a grid)
• Any other drawing materials you like, such as charcoal, Conte Crayon etc.
Oil Painting (you must use an odourless system for oil mediums and solvents!)
Colours (essential for rendering basic skin tones, but also most things):
• Titanium White
• Ivory Black
• Ultramarine Blue (make sure you have standard Ultramarine)
• Yellow Ochre
• Indian Red (Red Oxide that has a purple hue)
• Burnt Umber
• Alizarin Crimson (or cheaper equivalent)
• Cadmium Red (or cheaper equivalent)
• Cadmium Yellow Light (or cheaper equivalent – if in doubt bring Lemon Yellow)
• Phthalo Blue
• Phthalo Green
Special note for portraits and flesh:
Flesh tones, from the time of the Egyptian Fayum portraits, through to Titan, Velasquez, Manet and so on, have only ever required a very limited palette based around Lead White, Black, Earth Yellow, Earth Red, and perhaps one stronger red like Vermillion. Contemporary painting allows us to go in any direction we want, but it is essential to understand how rendering simple flesh works!
With our modern pigments we always need to start with these key colours for a basic understanding of flesh (of all kinds):
• Titanium White
• Ivory Black
• Yellow Ochre (acrylic painters use Yellow Oxide)
• Indian Red (acrylic painters use Red Oxide)
Art Spectrum is a good basic artist quality oil colour range.
You don’t need to buy the expensive version of a particular colour, but you will notice the difference in terms of colour strength. Also, the more expensive artist quality brands will go further, because there is more pure pigment ground into the oil and packed into each tube.
Oil Brushes:
It is crucial to have a good range of brushes for a variety of marks and purposes. Oil painters need more brushes because it’s best to keep each colour you use on a separate brush, especially for the areas that require more detailed work where you are painting multiple colours and tones. It’s important to avoid the habit of cleaning one brush each time you want to change colour.
You will also use different brushes at different stages of the painting. For example, when ‘blocking in’ at the start of a painting, you will use large brushes (cheap ones are better) that will help you sketch the composition in quickly, and that you can be a bit rough with. Later on, you will move on to more precise brushes to paint details, these ones you can spend a bit more money on.
As a guide you should always try to use the biggest brush possible for a particular passage of painting, this will build your fluency and sense of energy and mark making in your work, and will stop you from getting bogged down unnecessarily. In time you will develop your favourite range, and specific types for specific things!
Brush Range:
In general, it’s good to have this range of sizes and numbers which you can spread across the various types of hog bristle brush, described below.
• #12 x 1
• #10 x 1
• #8 x 2
• #6 x 2
• #4 x 2
• #2 x 2
• #1 x 2
As a simple guide, the big brushes (#12 & #10) can be Cheap Hog Bristle ROUND (Eterna 582 shape), and the remainder can be a mixture of cheap and better quality Hog Bristle ROUND and Hog Bristle FILBERT.
Brushes are a big investment - you will probably do most of your general to detailed painting with #6, #4 and #2, so as long as you can keep colours separate in this range, washing other brushes as you go in class can work, and you can keep your costs down.
Hog Bristle FILBERTS will give you more control and mark variety than anything else for this ‘detail’ range (#6, #4, #2), so may like them for Portraits.
Oil Mediums & Solvents:
Working in a class situation, we always need to use an odourless system when oil painting.
Quick-drying odourless medium (small bottle) and artist quality odourless solvent is often the easiest option, my personal favourite being Galkyd medium and Gamsol solvent by Gamblin.
You can simply use Artists Refined Linseed Oil as a medium (nearly every oil colour is ground in it), but the drying time is much slower, and it may hold you up while you’re waiting for it to dry. Also, whites will yellow when Linseed Oil is added to them, and mediums are constructed for minimal yellowing.
Or, you may simply be a painter that just uses the paint as is, with an impasto technique.
Also:
• Palette - could be disposable, but it’s better and far less frustrating if it’s a modern rectangular board shape (roughly A3) or the traditional kidney shape - make sure your palette has plenty of mixing space. Two cheap pieces of prepared board in A3 size sitting on a table is just as good, the spare one can be handy when you run out of space but want to keep those colours on the first board going.
• Double Dipper - for separate medium and solvent. Get the open style with the widest openings so you can get your brushes easily in and out.
• Rags, paper towels - plenty of these
• Cotton buds - extremely helpful for subtle removal of paint in tight spots
• Spare containers - for solvent, or mixing things on the go.
• Palette knife - you may like to have couple of these in different shapes.
• Anything else you like to make marks with or push paint around, such as spatulas, scrapers etc.
• A canvas or canvas board (or a few of them) - oil painting paper is also fine, but can be more difficult to work on and transport. A 4:5 ratio works well for portraiture, so 12x15” or 16x20” are good sizes.
• It’s always a good idea to wear disposable Nitrile gloves (non-latex and tougher) when painting and handling oil paint and mediums, they’re at most supermarkets.
• Use your GAMSOL or odourless solvent for clean-up in class.
• You may also want to buy and bring in a stainless-steel style oil brush washer with a sealable lid. They can be found at a reasonable price on eBay, and it means (if necessary) you can wash some of your brushes on the go properly, and also carry it without spills.
• You can also take your brushes home wrapped in glad wrap to clean and then wash with soap.
Acrylic Painting
Colours (acrylics sometimes have different colour names, but just follow this list):
• Titanium White
• Ivory Black
• Ultramarine Blue (make sure you have standard Ultramarine)
• Yellow Oxide
• Red Oxide
• Burnt Umber
• Alizarin Crimson (or cheaper equivalent)
• Cadmium Red (or cheaper equivalent)
• Cadmium Yellow Light (or cheaper equivalent – if in doubt bring Lemon Yellow)
• Phthalo Blue
• Phthalo Green
Matisse (Flow or Structure) are good artist quality options. Bring in your normal range and your favourites also!
Brushes - follow the basic range and advice above, but you’ll only need one of each size because you are constantly washing your brush. Stiffer bristle brushes are fine with acrylics, but you may prefer to have predominantly synthetic brushes for more control (in long handle), at least for the brushes you use most. I find the Neef Stiff Synthetic Hog Bristle Brushes in Filbert shape particularly wonderful for acrylic!
Watercolour style brushes can work well for certain types of acrylic painting, for finer details, but you will still want brushes that have a certain stiffness so you can push your paint around and work with freedom and flow.
Bring any acrylic style brushes you like.
Medium – can be a basic Acrylic Painting Medium, Gel Medium, Impasto Medium etc. I personally like to use just water.
• Acrylic palette/s with a flat surface, or just an A3 piece of Perspex (and perhaps a second one), plenty of mixing space is always better!
• Spare containers and a water container
• Rags, sponges, paper towels, cotton buds, scraper, or anything else you like to use.
• A canvas or canvas board (or a few of them), you can also use heavy water medium paper
• I always like to have a cheaper water media pad (at least 210gsm) with me for quick colour studies and problem solving.
• You can also have an even cheaper Cartridge Paper Pad for fast process sketches and practicing marks you might want to make in your main painting.
Important! In class we need to discard the bulk of unwanted acrylic paint by scraping onto paper towel, not washing everything down the sink.
Watercolours & Gouache
Gouache Colours (generally come in a very simplified colour range):
• White
• Black
• Ultramarine Blue
• Yellow Ochre
• Red Oxide or Burnt Sienna
• Burnt Umber
• Crimson
• Cadmium Red (or cheaper equivalent)
• Lemon Yellow
• Phthalo Blue
• Phthalo Green
• Watercolour colours follow a different system and can be quite specific, favouring particular transparent pigments, but you can use any that you have, and Mathew can give you advice on this, or simply use a basic watercolour set and you should be covered.
• Appropriate palettes for colours and mixing
• Water container and extra containers for mixing
• Rags, paper towels, cotton buds
• Synthetic watercolour brushes in a range of sizes: fine, medium and a large.
Also a Mop type brush and a larger squirrel brush can be wonderful, and other water media brushes such as a wide flat brush. Bring all your favourites!
Remember that you are making a variety of marks - sometimes you are covering a large flat area, sometimes you’re working on fine details, at other times it’s nice to have a brush that is loaded up but with a very fine point to work expansively and with details at the same time.
• Watercolour paper or watercolour pad.
• Cheaper water media pads are also great to have around for experiments and to practice marks. Try an Art Spectrum Draw & Wash Pad 210gsm for studies.
Please choose carefully as fees are non-refundable. Refunds of course fees will only be given if the course is cancelled or a place is not available in the course.
Payment of course fees implies that you have read and agree to the WAC Terms & Conditions.
