About the Course
This course is for anyone who would like to learn or improve their skills with
portraiture, from beginners to intermediate. It would also suit someone just wanting to widen their existing painting skills by applying them to portraits.
I will be guiding you through with step-by-step instructions for each piece. You will learn how to paint expressive portraits:
- natural skin tones to bold colour
- colour mixing, colour transitions, tonal values and dynamic composition
- accurate proportions and expressive brushwork.
What to bring
To begin with, we will all be working with acrylics, as we will all be using the same
technique and painting the same portrait. [Oils act differently to acrylics, so may
not be suitable for the technique that we will be using at the start.] We will venture
onto oils in later weeks. Please wear closed footwear.
You will need:
Transparent acrylic paints, either Atelier, Matisse or similar professional brand. If you’re not sure what transparents and opaques are, ask for help in store. [You can make your transparents into opaques by adding white.]
Colours:
Cool red - quinacridone magenta Warm red - cadmium red or equivalent.
Warm blue -ultramarine blue Cool blue - Prussian or cerulean
Warm yellow - Indian yellow Cool yellow- lemon yellow
Neutrals - black, burnt umber, burnt sienna and white.
NOTE: The above list is ideal but if you like, you could just get a basic set of a cool blue, cool red and cool yellow, a black and a white to start with.
Acrylic gloss medium (optional) – to increase transparency, sheen and
flow, ideal for glazes.
Canvas or canvas paper, palette, and apron
Variety of brushes, small to large (filberts are best for portrait painting).
Your Instructor
Cheryl Simpson
Cheryl is a self-taught artist born in Leeds, England. After spending 21 years in New Zealand, she now resides in Penrith, NSW. For the past five years, she has been teaching at paint-and-sip events in her NZ studio, and later expanding to workshops and classes in NZ and more recently in New South Wales. Cheryl is an active practicing artist and serves as the in-house resident artist at Stella’s Gallery on High Street, Penrith, every Monday. Art is a central part of her life—something she thrives on and loves to share with others by passing on her knowledge and techniques. Over the past eight years, she has attended numerous extensive courses to continually develop her skills and expand her teaching repertoire. Her specialty is portraits, and she is an expressive artist who brings emotion and depth to her work.