I ran another of my Portrait Drawing Workshops this past weekend. I've done this one several times before and we've always had a good time. This class was no exception. It's a 2-day workshop that goes for about 4 hours in the afternoon. We don't hire models as we already have enough in the room already. I have a format that seems to work pretty well. And I use an unexpected book as a primary reference. Each of these statements needs a bit of explanation.
These workshops go for no more than four hours because I've found that my students tend to hit the wall at that point. At three hours, they're still going strong; at four, their eyes start glassing over and the enthusiasm takes a marked downward turn. So rather than flog a dead horse, I wrap things up while there's still life left in them. A couple of weeks ago, Robert Hagan ran a workshop in my studio that went from 9-5 for three days with one hour off for lunch. I saw that the students came close to the saturation mark about the time we broke for lunch. The break restored our enthusiasm and we wrapped up in the afternoon before we ran out of steam altogether. So four hours seems to be the maximum amount of time to keep people cooped up and focused on something before they need a break.
I run my workshops in the afternoon. The reason is simple: I don't like to get up early in the morning! I did that for many years and don't want to do it again if there's any way around it. And since I'm the one setting the schedule for my own workshops, there's definitely a way around it.
My portrait workshops don't use hired models. Instead, all of the students model for each other. This exposes them to a wide variety of differences in features. They all have different eyes, noses, mouths, chins, hair (including a lack of), head structures, proportions, and so on. I shift them around so they don't draw the same individual twice in a row. And they all get to experience being a model for a bunch of artists and having their features analyzed in a class discussion. So far, everybody has had a good sense of humor about it.
For the format of the workshop, I start with a discussion of the basic structure of the head. I don't break out a skull and have them draw it as that approach never really did much for me. Instead, I show them a way to quickly build an armature for the head, a quickly sketched basic structure that they could stretch, compress, turn, and arrange as needed. Then we look at all the various features: eyes, nose, and so forth, and talk about how they're formed and what to look for in each individual. We also talk about proportions: the relationships between all the different features, some ways to analyze them, and getting them down on paper. And then we draw each other, one at a time. These are generally quick drawings, about 15 minutes to draw and then maybe 10 minutes or so to do a group critique. This is a portrait DRAWING workshop, after all, so they should be drawing as much as possible.
As for my primary reference book, it isn't one about drawing portraits at all, at least not in the traditional sense. It's The Mad Art of Caricature! A Serious Guide to Drawing Funny Faces, by Tom Richmond. Yes, my portrait reference is a book about caricatures. Tom Richmond is one of the best in the world in this field. You look at one of his figures and you know instantly who it is. In caricature, you have to identify what makes an individual face unique and then exaggerate it so it's (a) recognizable and (b) funny. In portraiture, you have to identify what makes an individual face unique and then render it at least somewhat realistically so it's recognizable. The actions are very similar. Richmond's book does a much better job at describing everything that goes into capturing the essence of an individual than any fine-art portrait drawing book I've ever seen. I found my copy at my local Barnes & Noble, but you can get it at Amazon too (of course).
So we had a successful workshop. I was really and truly impressed by how far the students came in just two days. Everybody, and I mean everybody, showed improvements in their abilities to see the differences in features and to accurately capture the features in pencil on paper. It really felt good to see that. One of the students even asked if I could do this workshop once a month! Umm, no, but I do give it about two or three times a year. Maybe I'll do one that's a bit more advanced next time, or focus more on the "drawing" aspect rather than the "seeing".
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