Mixed Media Portraiture

Learn to capture character as you create portraits using a variety of media. Through guided lessons, develop your skills in facial anatomy, proportion, and expression while exploring pastel sticks, charcoal, gouache, and graphite.

With guidance from a professional teaching artist, study a selection of portraits in the museum’s collection and understand how different artists approach light and texture to convey likeness. Strengthen your skills in rendering challenging components of portraiture (like hair, eyes, and hands) and learn to translate observation into convincing form using color and value.

• Week 1: Build a foundation in portrait structure through the study of anatomy and proportion. Learn skull landmarks and planes of the head while constructing accurate drawings from casts and photos using graphite, charcoal, and soft pastel.
• Week 2: Translate your understanding of anatomy into convincing form. Work from a five-value system to achieve a successful depiction of shadow and light, and practice modeling mass with pastels.
• Week 3: Focus on the expressive power of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Isolate these key facial features and practice rendering subtle shifts in their value and color to achieve likeness.
• Week 4: Explore skin tone and temperature as you mix and layer pastels. Learn to balance warm and cool light, refine midtone transitions, and study the effects of ambient and reflected light.
• Week 5: Hone your command of texture and edges as you draw varied surfaces. Experiment with layered marks, blending, and selective highlights to create texture and form in your depictions of braids, curls, and facial hair.
• Week 6: Complete your pastel portrait, demonstrating confident use of proportion, value, and color. We will conclude our time together with a reflection on our work and a conversation about what we have learned.

Expand your art-making skills through guided, step-by-step instruction with expert teaching artists. Over multiple weeks, you will learn alongside other creative adults and delve deeply into the artistic process, explore new techniques, and build your practice.

This is an intermediate-level Studio Class. The curriculum and instruction are intended for adults with some prior experience. While all motivated learners are welcome, students with a foundational understanding of these mediums will be most successful in keeping pace with the class and fully engaging in exercises and activities.

The registration fee includes all materials, weekly access to world-class art in the museum’s galleries, hours of expert instruction, and access to a Friday afternoon Open Studio during the run of the class.