Painting the Portrait with Sitter | Nicholas Robinson
Monday 15th - Friday 19th July
10am - 1pm
5 half day workshop
IN-STUDIO OPTION ONLY
€295
€25 off when booking with 5 half days Fundamentals of Life Drawing
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If this course is fully booked you can add your name to the waiting list HERE
ABOUT THIS COURSE
Painting the portrait is one of the longest traditions in oil painting; from van Eyck, Titian and Velázquez through to Reynolds, Romney and Raeburn and up to our present day.
Painting the portrait is a time honoured practice of the oil painter.
This workshop is designed to break down painting the portrait from the model into easily understandable principles.
During the 15 hours you will focus on;
drawing and design of the head and face
working with shadow and light to describe form
colour theory and mixing to describe colour and light
use of materials and technique in oil painting
conveying mood and expression to capture the personality of the sitter.
“every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
Materials List
The basic materials list is:
• a canvas primed with jesso - even pre-primed canvases will need another application or two of jesso
(suggested size 40x30cm up to 90x50cm, but it's up to the individual 60x40cm is what I would use)
• Brushes
• Palette
• Palette knife
• Black/ raw umber /red /ochre /white oils
• Sansodor
• A preferred medium.
The detailed materials list is:
• brown baking paper (for storing oil paint)
• Vanish soap (for cleaning brushes)
• Sansodor (odourless solvent)
• Preferred medium (I would use linseed oil)
• Medium cup
• Wooden palette
• Palette knife
• Canvas
Oil-paints.
Michael Harding/ Old Holland recommended
1. Raw Umber
2. Ultramarine Blue
3. Titanium White
4. Yellow ochre or Old Holland Yellow Ochre Light
5. Cadmium red
6. Transparent Red Oxide
7. Alizarin Crimson
8. Ivory black
Brushes:
A range of about 10+ flat and filbert brushes in different sizes. From Evans art shop I suggest:
• Winton Flats 1 to 4
• Winton Filberts 1 to 8
• Winton Short Flat Brights 2 to 8
• Richard Oliver Flat Hogs 0 to 4
• Richard Oliver Hog Filberts 1 to 6 Also the Mr. Price Royal & Langnickel brushes are fine.
Get 2 packets of those and you’re away in a hack. (Pictured)
Plumb line (a 60-70cm piece of thin string or thread with a small fishing weight attached to one end but I will bring these)
• hand mirror
• black mirror (a piece of Lacobel black glass available from the glazier)
Canvas prep:
To paint a life size head and hands portrait like this Repin, you want about 90x50cm
For a life size head and shoulders alone like this Serov get approx 60x40cm approx. (I would suggest this size) For a smaller than life size head alone get about 40cmx30cm
Meet nicholas
Florence Academy of Art prize winner and graduate.
Nicholas finished his post-graduate studies at Ireland’s National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in 2009, having previously graduated from the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork. Thoroughly disillusioned by art education in Ireland, Nicholas searched elsewhere and was introduced to the American ateliers in Florence, in which students study exclusively from life, by the Irish painter Gearoid Hayes.
Subsequently Nicholas quit his teaching career and attended the Florence Academy of Art, Sweden under the tutelage of the Swedish painter Joakim Ericsson. Nicholas received a pair of drawing awards during his time at the school in Sweden and returned to Ireland in 2013. He is now exhibiting nationally, and works and teaches out of in his studio in Wicklow.