Highlights from my Spring/Summer Portrait Painting and Life Drawing class!

This is one of the best classes I have taught.  The energy, engagement, and openness to learning was as intense as any up to this point.  I had tremendous fun teaching it, and I really had the opportunity to push this very dedicated group of students.  I thought I'd share some of the highlights.

This class had not been offered at the college for about 8 years, so it was up to me to reintroduce it and structure it in this contemporary age of art, where the portrait continues to reemerge as one of the premier art forms.

I wanted to start off with some firm grounding and understanding of underlying anatomical studies.  This provided the students the opportunity to learn about the volume-defining structures of the skull, the expression-defining connection of muscles, and- most importantly- the proportional measurements of the portrait from a underlying viewpoint.  I wanted their first major project to be something foundational to build on for the rest of the class- before we moved into linear, full value, chromatic or conceptual work as we went forward.

We started off by drawing the skull models and flayed heads in the studio.  I even brought down the plastic anatomy models from the biology lab, with their removable anatomical layers.  Students worked on skull drawings, sketchbook studies, and eventually a homework project that overlayed the muscle layer over the skull.  Using dark carbon pencils on paper for the skull, they layed a sheet of frosted mylar and drew the muscle layers in graphite- allowing them to see how the two layers worked together, and attachment points for the muscles.  I asked them to play with the transparency  and depth between the layers, something the digital reproductions have a hard time conveying.

After a week of anatomical and proportional studies we brought in live models to apply these proportional measurements and early anatomical understandings.  For some students drawing from live models was brand new, for others, they had varying amounts of past experience.  Drawing from life is very challenging, but is also essential for understanding the volumetric nature of the head.  I also made sure students were studying both more frontal and profile views, as they often choose the same positions in the studio.  Having a budget for two models helped with that tremendously.  All drawings are about life-size, on at least 18"X24" paper.

     

Week four and we moved into monochromatic full value.  With some sketchbook studies and demos under our belts, we got out the Planes of the Head models I had just had the college order.  Lit with a strong light source, students were asked to use the sight measuring techniques they had learned as well as the Six Degrees of light we had been studying to draw these models out in charcoal.  I told them these would be some of the most important studies we made as we headed for full value, monochromatic and chromatic, with our live models.  They proved to be some of the most valuable studies of the whole semester!

      



   

Back to live models, we spent two weeks on monochromatic studies with charcoal.

              

       

   

To help with the transition to color work, something students often find a bit intimidating, I had them draw with the 3 colors of Conte Crayon; Sanguine for the warm midtones they saw, Bistre for the cooler shadow values, and white for the brightest highlights, which were always a bit cooler than the surrounding light areas.  I allowed just a touch of black to cool down the core shadows, and asked them to maintain luminosity in those deep areas.  We combined this essential color theory with the planar, anatomical, and proportional system we were learning and it was off the races!  Students were able to make some very believable skin colors and textures.  I thought these were some of the simplest and most beautiful works of the whole semester, and they really helped with our transition to full chroma.

       
      

And then it was on to full chroma.  I decided we would use chalk pastel for a number of reasons.  For one. it was analogous to the dry work we had been doing with charcoal and conte.  For another, the studio we are in is not ventilated for fumey paints such as oil.  Finally, I have experienced in other painting classes that acrylics are too frustrating with their drying times, and that pastel could create much more believable skin tones.  But before we started with live models, students were asked to recreate some master pastel portraits to take some of the learning curve out of the transition to full chroma.

    

Even their sketchbook studies were something to note!

              

After these studies, and loads of research on pastel I had given them, it was time to bring the models back. and apply full chroma pastel to our life drawing practices!  Yes, these were all done from life in the studio.

      

                       

       

   

The images above represent a broad range of the class, not just a few of the best performers.  But I did want to share the extremely impressive progress and growth of one in particular.  These three images represent who I call my most improved student.  Even I, a college teacher of five years, have not seen anything quite this dramatic.  I like to think I had a lot to do with this.  One of her first studio drawings, a full value drawing from about midway, and a full chroma painting from near the end:




Lastly, I gave them their final project: The Contemporary Portrait.  It asked them to take the proportional, structural, value, and chromatic tools they had learned throughout the semester, and create a composition with meaning in its form and concept.  As you could imagine, the diversity of my Community College Students (Yes, these were COMMUNITY COLLEGE students) produced a dramatic variety of interpretations....

   

       

I will miss this class.  I simply LOVE teaching art!!!!!