Portraiture Foundations

Realistic portraiture is seen by many artists as one of the ultimate skills and challenges. Portraiture also provides us with an excellent opportunity to further refine our studies of light and shade.

In this course you will develop the skills required to create a realistic portrait and some amazing textures for a huge variety of subject matter using Graphite pencil, Charcoal and white Conte.

You will discover the proportions on the face and how to develop a portrait starting from one single vertical and horizontal line.

You will study the individual facial features, how to draw a child’s face in graphite pencil and how to draw hair.

Discover the incredibly intuitive and sensual medium of charcoal as you further develop your understanding of tone.

Learn twelve different charcoal techniques.

Draw three different hairstyles including; male short wavy hair, female long wavy hair and female medium curly hair.

In the final two weeks of the course you will create your own portrait.

Course Format

This course is the third in a series of six course units (available here for purchase on Reed.co.uk) which together form the Complete Drawing Course.

The course unit contains five weeks of study notes plus a two week final project (presented as a series of pdf eBooks).

It is recommended that you study between 2 and 4 hours per week to complete the course in 7 weeks.

You will have 3 months access to the course materials in the members area.

This is a self-teach course (with Instructor support as an optional upgrade)

Need Personal Instructor Support?

Detailed instructor support and feedback via email for every weekly exercise and project in the course is available as a membership upgrade from £80 per month.

A discount for Reed.co.uk buyers is available.

Please contact the course provider to upgrade your membership when you purchase the course.

Syllabus

Week One: An Introduction to Portraiture

• Introduction to portraiture
• Shading individual features of the face in graphite pencil

Week Two: The Human Adult Face

• Learn the sighting technique to help you measure proportions when drawing objects close up from life
• Proportion and placement of the individual features of the Adult face
• Take a photograph for your portrait project using the instructions provided

Week Three: Produce a Portrait

• Draw a portrait of a three year old child ‘Isha’ in graphite pencil

Week Four: (Part A) Charcoal

• Introduction to charcoal
• Learn twelve charcoal techniques allowing you to create hundreds of textures
• Learn to draw hair with a variety of different hairstyles presented, using charcoal and white conte on grey paper

Week Five: (Part B) Drawing Hair

• Draw a variety of objects using charcoal with white conte on grey Mi-Teintes paper using the construction drawing method

Weeks Six and Seven: Final Project

• Begin your project: A self-portrait or portrait of someone you know and see often
• Your portrait will be drawn on the smooth side of grey Mi-Teintes paper using charcoal and white conte

This course is ideal for:

Adult Beginner Artists

Students preparing for entry into formal creative and design based studies

Home Schoolers  (Children 12+ with adult supervision)

Experienced artists with ‘skill gaps’ in the area of portraiture and charcoal drawing.

It is recommended that you have previously studied our ‘Outline Drawing’ and ‘Shading and Form’ courses which are available here on Reed.co.uk.