Join award-winning portrait artist Mathew Lynn for a strong grounding in portrait drawing and painting — whether you're starting from scratch or consolidating existing practice. Beginners get a step-by-step process at a pace that suits them; those with experience will expand their understanding of what's possible in the portrait form.
Over two days we’ll go deep on three essentials:
- The drawing process — likeness and presence through silhouette, line, and interrelated tone-shapes
- Transferring that information to the painting surface, and blocking-in
- The key pigments for flesh tones, and their historical context
We’ll start with a discussion on the history of portraiture, from the Egyptian Fayum portraits through to the contemporary, before moving into technique — preliminary sketches, composition, proportions, features, and achieving likeness and personality. A key part of Mathew’s teaching is understanding the container of the features — the head will never look like the person until this is right, before the features are even addressed. It’s about how volume is felt in two dimensions, not confused with actual volume, and held with precision of line. Mathew will also help those wanting to explore more contemporary approaches.
Beginners will work step by step from basic line drawing through shading, corrections, and grid transfer. More experienced painters will go deeper into silhouette, line, and toneshapes.
Everyone will cover the essential colour mixing required for flesh tones, then painting technique — blocking in, refinement, building up flesh through body colour and brushwork, and understanding transparency — followed by a painting demonstration. You can also just draw for the entire workshop.
You'll leave with a strong set of portrait skills and the confidence to push further, in Mathew's usual atmosphere of lively conversation and encouragement.
Please bring:
- A number of A4 prints of people that appeal to you — Mathew can help you choose the best to work from (e.g. try to avoid wide angle photos). Having these also on a tablet is highly recommended.
- The same images on your phone, in case we need to print or crop for composition — we try to avoid the office printer, so come prepared.
- Any existing works you’d like help or guidance on.
- A4 Sketchbook or paper (possibly also an A3 Cartridge pad for fast process sketches and practising marks for your painting)
- Pencils — bring in a range such as H, B, 2B, 6B
- Staedtler Mars rubber (we will also trim this into wedges for precision removals)
- Knife for sharpening pencils and cutting the rubber into wedges
- 30cm Ruler (only if you think you’d like to use a grid)
- Any other drawing materials you like, such as charcoal, Conté crayon, etc.
(essential for rendering basic skin tones, but also most things):
- Titanium White (Gouache: White)
- Ivory Black (Gouache: Black)
- Ultramarine Blue (make sure you have standard Ultramarine)
- Yellow Ochre (Acrylic: Yellow Oxide)
- Indian Red — Red Oxide with a purple hue (Acrylic & Gouache: Red Oxide)
- Burnt Umber
- Alizarin Crimson (or cheaper equivalent) (Gouache: Crimson)
- Cadmium Red (or cheaper equivalent)
- Cadmium Yellow Light (or cheaper equivalent — if in doubt bring Lemon Yellow) (Gouache: Lemon Yellow)
- Phthalo Blue
- Phthalo Green
Special note for portraits and flesh (for all mediums):
Flesh tones — from the Egyptian Fayum portraits through to Titian, Velázquez, and Manet — have only ever required a limited palette: Lead White, Black, Earth Yellow, Earth Red, and perhaps one stronger red like Vermilion. Contemporary painting lets us go in any direction, but understanding how simple flesh renders is essential.
With modern pigments, we always start with four key colours for a basic understanding of flesh (of all kinds):
- Titanium White
- Ivory Black
- Yellow Ochre (acrylic: Yellow Oxide)
- Indian Red (acrylic: Red Oxide)
Also extremely useful, and necessary:
- Cadmium Red
- Alizarin Crimson
Some of you may know the Zorn Palette — a similar, very good system — but I encourage using Indian Red first, and Cadmium Red where necessary; Indian Red has flesh qualities that make the experience more direct.
Art Spectrum is a decent artist-quality oil range, but there are much better options like Old Holland and Michael Harding. All the colours above sit in the Series 1 price range, except proper Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, and Cadmium Yellow Light — only those three can break the bank. You don’t need the expensive version of those colours in your brand, but you’ll notice a huge difference in how they behave when making flesh, and the better brands ultimately offer the most enjoyment and precision.
A good range of brushes is crucial — and for oil painters you’ll want more than you might expect, since it’s best to keep each colour on its own brush, especially for detailed areas with multiple colours and tones in play. Oil painters don’t clean one brush every time they change colour, as you can with acrylic, gouache, or watercolour.
You’ll also use different brushes at different stages. For blocking-in in oil, use large, cheap round or filbert hog bristle brushes you can be rough with to sketch the composition in quickly. Acrylic painters can also use these, or stiff synthetic varieties. Later, move to more precise brushes for detail — worth spending a bit more on these. As a guide, always use the biggest brush possible for the passage you’re painting — it builds fluency and energy in your mark-making, and stops you getting bogged down.
As a general range and guide for oil painters (acrylic one of each):
- #12 x 1
- #10 x 1
- #8 x 2
- #6 x 2
- #4 x 2
- #2 x 2
- #1 x 2
- #0 x 1
Be aware that some European brands double the numbering in their range — your art shop will be able to explain this to you.
For oils, the big brushes (#12 & #10) can be cheap HOG BRISTLE ROUND (Eterna 582 dome shape), and the rest a mix of cheap and better-quality HOG BRISTLE ROUND and HOG BRISTLE FILBERT. Some additional cheap hog bristle rounds mentioned above are also great in the medium sizes as dry blenders, thanks to their dome shape — useful at the end of a session to blend shapes together. Much of what you do is understanding how to manipulate what you’ve put down, not necessarily adding more paint. Though classic good-quality rounds with proper points are a good standard, filberts can give some people more control and mark variety than anything else in the detail range (#6, #4, #2), which can be useful for portraits. Brushes are a big investment — you’ll likely do most of your general-to-detailed painting with #6, #4, and #2, so as long as you keep colours separate in this range, you can wash others as you go and keep costs down. STIFF SYNTHETIC ROUND or FILBERT is also great for these sizes. For #1 and #0, just use stiff synthetic rounds (NEEF 95 is the best) for even finer control and a point that holds its shape long term, far more than hog bristle.
Flat brushes can be tricky — they leave pronounced chisel shapes unless you’ve had experience blending the facets they make, and filberts do this job when laying off flatly is required.
For acrylic: hog bristle brushes work well, but proper stiff synthetic long-handled brushes are by far the best — the NEEF 95 Stiff Synthetic in Filbert shape is particularly good for acrylic, with some of their Rounds in the fine sizes, as per the advice above. Soft synthetic watercolour-style brushes are completely superseded by the NEEF 95, since they can’t really push paint around, and it’s far easier to do fine work with the long-handled #1 and #0 anyway. There are also some cheap, large stiff synthetic round brushes available from hardware stores, great for big blocking-in and energetic marks. Don’t come in with only soft synthetic-style brushes!
For watercolour and gouache: synthetic brushes in a range of sizes — fine, medium, and large. A mop-type brush and a larger squirrel brush can be wonderful too, along with other water-media brushes like a wide flat brush. Bring all your favourites — you’re making a variety of marks, sometimes covering a large flat area, sometimes working fine details, so it helps to have a brush that can hold a lot of colour while still coming to a fine point.
(note: you must use an odourless system for oil mediums and solvents!)
Oil mediums
We always use an odourless system for oil painting in class. Quick-drying odourless medium (small bottle) and artist-quality odourless solvent is usually the easiest option — for drying, my personal favourite is Galkyd medium and Gamsol solvent, both by Gamblin. Galkyd has to be looked after and brushes cleaned perfectly, though, so Galkyd Lite and Gamblin’s 3in-1 medium are also good alkyd resin drying options, and more forgiving in handling and brush washing.
You can use Artists’ Refined Linseed Oil as a medium instead (most oil colours are already ground in it), but it dries much more slowly, which may hold you up between sessions. Whites will also yellow when refined linseed oil is added, whereas proper mediums are formulated to minimise this. Stand Linseed Oil is less yellowing, but extremely fat, so you’re best to make up a solution with odourless solvent. Or, simply paint straight from the tube with an impasto technique.
Also:
- Palette — could be disposable, but a modern rectangular, light-coloured A3 board palette is far less frustrating, with plenty of mixing space. Buy two cheap ones — the spare is handy when you run out of room but want to keep your first board’s colours going.
- Double Dipper for medium and solvent — open style with the widest openings, so brushes go in and out easily
- Rags and paper towel — bring plenty
- Cotton buds — great for subtle paint removal in tight spots
- Spare containers — for solvent, or mixing on the go
- Palette knife — a couple of different shapes is handy
- Anything else for making marks or pushing paint around — spatulas, scrapers, etc.
- A canvas or canvas board (or a few) — oil paper works too but is trickier to handle and transport. A 4:5 ratio suits portraiture well, so 12x15" or 16x20" are good sizes.
- Disposable Nitrile gloves (non-latex, tougher) — worth wearing when handling oil paint and mediums; available at most supermarkets now
- A proper large oil brush washer with strainer and sealed lid, if you can manage it — reasonably priced on eBay (https://ebay.io/m/BszxRb), and lets you wash brushes properly on the go without spills
- You can also take brushes home wrapped in glad wrap, but if you’re using Galkyd, it’s best to clean them properly as soon as you can — Galkyd sets fast and aggressively once it starts. The Incredible Brush Cleaner by Chroma is a good option for this, used after a Gamsol wash.
Matisse (Flow or Structure) is a reasonable artist-quality option, but the main frustration with acrylic is colour shift when it dries darker — especially frustrating in portraits. Golden and Schmincke PRIMAcryl have both reduced this significantly and would be worth trying.
Medium — probably easiest to use a basic Acrylic Painting Medium if it’s necessary (say for glazing), but I personally just use water. Worth bringing a Retarder Medium too, since drying time is also one of the bigger challenges with acrylic, particularly when mastering flesh.
- Acrylic palette/s with a flat surface, or just an A3 piece of white Perspex (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) — heavy water-media paper also works. A 4:5 ratio suits portraiture well, so 12x15" or 16x20" are good sizes.
- A cheaper water media pad (at least 210gsm) is great to have on hand for quick colour studies and problem-solving — try an Art Spectrum Draw & Wash Pad 210gsm
Important! In class, discard the bulk of unwanted acrylic paint by scraping onto paper towel — not washing it down the sink.
Watercolour colours follow a different system and can be quite specific, favouring particular transparent pigments — but you can use whatever you have, and Mathew can advise on this, or simply bring a basic watercolour set and you’ll be covered.
- Appropriate palettes for colours and mixing
- Water container and extra containers for mixing
- Rags, paper towels, cotton buds
- Watercolour paper or watercolour pad
- A cheaper water media pad (at least 210gsm) is great to have on hand for quick colour studies and problem-solving — try an Art Spectrum Draw & Wash Pad 210gsm
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.
