Contemporary Portraits in Oil

Contemporary Portraits in Oil

Weekend Workshop | Available

1501 10th Ave East Seattle, WA 98102 United States

Room 304

All Levels

6/29/2024-6/30/2024

9:30 AM-4:30 PM PDT on Sun Sat

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$372.00

$334.80

$20.00

Portraits are often thought to be an intimidating subject matter, but this course seeks to simplify the process and embrace imperfection. We will focus on mastering the initial stages of painting an alla prima portrait, finding and essentializing large shapes of color that become the face. We will work on the essential building blocks of making a painting (that also happens to be a portrait): color, light, and shape. This is not a class primarily about learning perfect anatomy or “getting the eyes just right” – it is about seeing masses of color and slowly breaking down these masses into more specific form if it is necessary to the composition. We will learn that likeness is often not about getting the details perfect, but about seeing something larger.

  • Paint Tubes: Required:
    1. Titanium White
    2. Ivory Black
    3. Cadmium Yellow Light
    4. Yellow Ochre or Mars Yellow
    5. Cadmium Red Light
    6. Ultramarine Blue
    7. Mars Red or Burnt Sienna (any oxide red will do)
    8. Alizarin Crimson OR Quinacridone Magenta/Red
    Optional:
    9. Cadmium Orange
    10. Phthalo Green
    11. Dioxazine Purple
    12. Indian Yellow

    Tools:
    1. Oil painting Surfaces- Oil paper, canvas paper, gessoed paper, etc. Size between 9” x 12” and 18”x24”. I recommend Arches Oil Paper
    2. 1” wide masking
    3. At least 16”x20” sheet of stiff foamcore, cardboard, or wood. This will be a hard surface
    to which you attach your paintings.
    4. A disposable paper palette or glass palette (recommended: Jack Richeson Grey Matters Paper Palette, 12 by 16-Inch, 50 Sheets)
    5. Liquitex 119901 Professional Freestyle Small Painting Knife No. 1, or any medium sized, trowel-shaped metal palette knife
    6. Roll of Paper towels OR old clothes you can turn into paint rags.
    7. This is a palette knife-heavy course, but you might wish to have a selection of brushes available to use in later stages of a painting. I use these
    brushes-
    #2 round synthetic
    #2 round bristle brush, #6 round bristle brush, #6 flat bristle brush
    #11 Filbert bristle brush 1’2” flat synthetic brush, 1” flat synthetic brush.
    Any brand will work, I recommend Princeton Snap or Princeton Select brand because they are more affordable and of decent quality. You may choose to get a pack of brushes to save money, we can make anything work. You mostly need a good palette knife and a variety of size Bristle brushes to experiment with.
    8. Gamblin Cold wax medium
    9. A medium sized jar to put brushes in
    10. Soap for cleaning brushes. I recommend phels naptha bar soap or something similar.
    Dish soap or Murphy’s Wood Oil Soap will also work.
    11. A small bottle of Gamsol
    12. A Small plastic squeeze dropper bottle
    13. Disposable Gloves