Portrait Painting for Artists

Workshop Number One of Five 2016

Tutor: David Chen

Many of us tend to continue attending workshops that teach us in the subjects that we enjoy the most or that we are best at. Whilst that is enjoyable, and can help us to keep improving in areas that we like and get the most out of personally, it doesn’t help us to become more well-rounded as artists. Plus by taking on subjects that we are weakest at, we have the opportunity to discover where we really need to make improvements, as we are not calling on well-practised habits. There is, of course, the other aspect of taking on our weakest subjects and methods, and that is that we don’t always know what are good or bad habits that we have used for months or possibly years.. This leads me to the reason why I am doing a series of portrait workshops this semester. The human figure is probably my weakest subject, I avoided it for years and thought that I could get away with doing nearly any other subject. Then I went to Chisholm, and one major subject was life drawing. After which I decided that one focus of my emerging arts practice would be to teach drawing, so how can I be a good teacher if I don’t practice what I preach? I hope readers will enjoy this series of painting workshop blogs, and get some valuable information from them. As always I defer to my tutor David Chen if readers would like to follow up by attending workshops to learn more about what I am covering. His contact details are at the end of this blog.