My Portrait Workshop at the New Mexico Art League

The garden in front of the New Mexico Art League was in full bloom, welcoming all the students to my summer 2013 Portrait Workshop.

The first thing I did, to prepare for this class, was to set up a portrait wall with some of my favorite paintings to inspire the students. My wall included images by Richard Schmid, Antonio Mancini, Rob Liberace, John William Waterhouse, Sir Henry Raeburn, William Merritt Chase and others.

Here is the League workshop room all set up and prepared for the students to begin. The first model (of 10 models for the week) was about to arrive.

On the second day, the students used only burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, which is why I had this beautiful redhead posing in a royal blue robe.

The students mixed the different values of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue to establish warm and cool tones in the skin. This enables the painter to bring forms closer with the warm colors and push forms back with the cooler colors.

On day three, we all stayed after hours to watch a Rob Liberace video, eat pizza and drink wine! Great fun!!

On day five, I needed my tenth model to inspire everyone, because exhaustion was setting in. She came dressed in 1800's clothing. If you look closely, you can see a little bird nesting in the hat among the flowers!

She looked fabulous, but thank goodness, times have changed and we can stay cool in our shorts and t-shirts!

Everyone on break!! It is really important for students to get away from the easel and their painting during the breaks. This allows them to come back with fresh eyes and see something they might have missed previously.

We laid all the paintings on the floor in the north room of the League. Here you can see the paintings they did on the first day with just burnt umber and white on a toned grey surface.

The top two rows show the work done on the second day with burnt sienna and ultramarine blue.

By day four, they were using two blues, two reds and two yellows. We had a gentleman pose with a green hat in the morning and a young girl aged eleven came in the afternoon with a large white bow in her hair.

I had such a great group of people in this workshop.They all showed up, stayed open to new ideas and worked hard. Consequently, they painted some very strong work. I was proud of each one of them and their efforts. 

My thanks to those of you who took the workshop, and to you for stopping by to take a look!

Happy Painting!
Cynthia