The Contemporary Portrait: Drawing And Painting, Days 3, 4 & 5

Friday was the last day of the week-long portrait drawing and painting course I took at the Royal Drawing School here in Shoreditch. You can find my post on the first two days here. The last three days were focused on painting with some drawing in between to warm up.

The instructor who was going to teach the second half of the course originally had to cancel on short notice so we had Sharon Brindle, another faculty member, fill in for her. Sharon is an outstanding teacher and if you live in London and are at all interested in drawing, I highly recommend you check out the courses she teaches.

We started off talking about composition and deciding what to paint. As for the drawing section of the course, there were two models present at all time for us to paint. It was great that the models changed over the week and I definitely struggled more with some faces than with others. Beards especially throw me off still.

In the last three days, there was even less talking and presenting than in the first two, we pretty much were given basic instructions at the beginnings of each morning and afternoon and just started painting. Sharon kept walking around the room, offering suggestions and answering questions.

For me, this was the first time using oil paint with a brush and some solvent, trying to reproduce something in front of me in some way. It was quite challenging and took some emotional management at times when things didn't seem to be going very well.

One thing I realised quickly is that in both my drawing and my painting, I've been way too reluctant to make changes to a piece in progress. Sharon would often suggest we rub out much of a painting that we'd just spent a few hours on if something wasn't right about it. While it was painful at times to erase something that took a lot of work, it also releases the pressure to get started. If I know I can course correct at any time, putting down that first stroke is much less scary.

All in all, this course was a much more intense experience than I was expecting. While concentrating from 10 to 5 every day is hard work, I came home every day full of energy and excitement. I signed up for a life drawing course in autumn and I'm planning to write another post sometime soon on how I'm preparing for that.