Teacher: Kyler
Course Length: 6 sessions
Class Days: Monday, beginning September 28
Time: 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Portrait Drawing from Life: Light, Form, and Likeness

In this class, students will draw the portrait from life using toned paper, black and white charcoal, and soft value materials. The focus is not photographic finish or highly polished realism. Instead, students will learn to see the head as a living form in light: proportion, placement, planes, value, edge, gesture, and character.

Working from models, students will practice building a portrait gradually, beginning with the large relationships before moving toward smaller decisions. We will use toned paper as a middle value, adding darks and lights to clarify form, light direction, and emphasis. Students will learn how much information a drawing needs, when to sharpen an edge, when to soften or simplify, and how likeness emerges from accurate relationships rather than detail alone.

This class is for students who want to deepen their observational drawing through the portrait. Rendering will be taught as a tool for seeing, not as an end in itself. Drawings may be careful, resolved, expressive, spare, or exploratory, but the goal is always a stronger visual understanding of the person in front of us.

Prerequisite: Beginning Drawing 1

Materials:

Canson Mi-Teintes Gray Tones Drawing Paper Pad, 12″ × 16″

Bob’s Fine Vine Charcoal

General’s Black Charcoal Pencil, 2B

General’s Black Charcoal Pencil, HB

General’s White 558 Charcoal Pencil

General’s White Charcoal Sticks

PanPastel Black 800.5

General’s Kneaded Eraser

General’s Factis Mechanical Eraser

Tombow Mono Eraser