The Portrait in Pastel

Description

What if color mixing didn’t have to be so overwhelming?

Color is a vast and challenging topic for art students. Without instruction, novice artists can easily become overwhelmed by the sheer variety of color in the world, both in nature and in our materials. This class seeks to demystify color development in portraiture. Building upon our past portrait drawing classes, The Portrait in Pastel will guide students through simple strategies for achieving convincing, natural flesh tones in pastel, presented via a single long-pose portrait demonstration over 6 weeks.

Why Pastel?

Pastel is capable of delivering vibrant and expressive results in its own right, but it’s also an excellent “bridge medium” between drawing and painting for two important reasons. First, because pastels are dry, they can feel more familiar to students who prefer or are accustomed to drawing materials. Second, pastel sets offer a wide range of pre-mixed colors that provide helpful starting points for color development. While painting requires every color to be mixed from scratch, pastel manufacturers do some of the mixing for you—which brings efficiency to art making and can help students become more familiar with flesh tones.

About This Class

Instructor David Jamieson will present a method for executing a beautiful portrait in pastel via an extended demonstration over 6 weeks. David’s demo will focus on developing a convincing sense of light and three-dimensionality. Discussion of color development will happen at the materials level (pastel selection and mixing strategies), supported by theoretical concepts including three-dimensional “color space” and the Munsell system.

This class will be streamed live on Zoom for 6 Wednesdays. The primary class session will meet between 1:00pm and 4:00pm (Central Time), when David will teach and demonstrate on-camera. Each session will focus on a particular stage of the process, and students are encouraged to work along with David and ask questions in real time.

Can’t Make It To The Live Sessions?

No problem! For students unable to attend live on Wednesdays, video recordings will remain available for the full 6 weeks of the class, PLUS one week afterward!

A high-quality photo reference of the portrait subject will be provided to all students at the beginning of class. This will be the same reference David uses, so we’ll all work with the same subject from the same point of view—something not possible with traditional on-ground classes where we work from life. Another advantage: students can work on their portraits between classes, although we recommend not getting too far ahead of the demo each week.