Portraiture Workshop

I attended a portraiture workshop yesterday, organised by the Ipswich Arts Society.  The teacher / tutor was Cynthia Hargraves.  I was very impressed with all our practice portraiture drawing exercises. 

We had to draw a quick portrait sketch in three minutes of an image that was projected on a screen.  We completed ten sketches in thirty minutes.  I was happy with my ‘early’ sketches, but towards the end of the thirty minutes, my sketched were not so good.  Cynthia gave us heaps of good tips about portrait painting, and even gave us tips on matching skin tones via the computer.

Cynthia Hargraves is a professional portrait painter, and if any reader would like more information on Cynthia, you can visit her website at www.cynthiahargraves.com.

In the afternoon we painted a portrait using your own medium of choice.  I used acrylic paint, as I have been working only in acrylics for the last six months.  I painted a self portrait. I wanted to paint a portrait of my wife but she declined, so I had her take a digital picture of me on the night before the workshop. I processed it on the computer, and then laminated it, so I could peg the photo on the top of my easel. 

I started using a brand new / different brand of acrylics for this workshop.  This was a mistake as the new brand of acrylics had an entirely different feel.  This expensive brand was thicker and ‘sticky’, compared to the acrylic paints that I have been using.  I did get my self portrait about half completed.  Everyone had a digital camera, so everyone took photos of each other’s work, including my half competed work.

This is a photo of Cynthia giving us some tips on setting up digital cameras for photographing portraiture paintings, to check for skin tones.