Face to Face! Urban Portraits That Tell Stories


I'm happy and excited to invite you to my workshop, which will focus on what I love the most - sketching people, and particularly - in portraits and how tell the story through a human face.

Date:
April 27, 2018
10:00 AM - 1:30 PM

Workshop location: 
Tel Aviv, Israel. (exact location TBA)

Space is limited: contact ultramarin71[at]gmail.com to make a reservation and arrange payment.

Maximum number of participants: 15

Skill level: Suitable for all ability levels.

"Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is in the face. It tells all." - David Hockney

For me there is no more interesting subject than sketching people, and of course the most fascinating part is - their faces. When I can't pull out my sketchbook, I catch myself sketching with my eyes - watching the celebration of the human faces that constant surrounds us - men and women, adults and children, faces in all shapes and colors - talking, laughing, crying, telling us about themselves in all sorts of ways.
In this workshop we'll practice drawing portraits, but not in a traditional academic approach.

By doing series of fun and freeing up exercises we will learn:

·         to overcome the fear of drawing faces
·         to free up from automatic approaches and selections
·         to discover what is the essence of "likeness" in portraiture - how to get the real, profound likeness, and not only the external one
·         not to mechanically copy  reality , but to observe the essentials from the artistic point of view, and to sacrifice the secondary
·         to adopt new approaches and understandings
·         to connect to the emotional side of drawing
·         to strengthen hand-eye coordination
·         to improve the ability of observation
·         to enjoy the process without thinking about the result
·         to see personality and story in each character
·         to tell the story with the portrait

Schedule
Meet and greet - 15 minutes
Exercises, 3 sessions -  30 minutes - 1 hour duration each
Final conclusion - sharing our work and insights - 15 minutes

1. Warming-up  duels
Participants will divide into pairs and draw each other in three different exercises:
1.     Eye-hand connection
·         Blind contour - draw without looking at the paper.
·         From memory - draw without looking at the model
2.     Exaggeration (caricature)
·         Strengthen essentials and exaggerate
3.     Capture emotions
·         Simultaneous sketching - look at each other expressing certain emotions.
Finally, we will share the portraits and discuss what each exercise contributes.
 2. Going out!
After the warm-up, we will sketch fast portraits of people passing by on location.
We'll give a title to each portrait. The title can show what we think about the character or what she/he looks like.
We'll try to apply what we've learned in the previous exercises and pay attention to hand-eye coordination, capture the expressions of emotions and strengthen the essential and what is authentic in each character we sketch.
At the end of the section, participants will display as many portraits as they made in various approaches and will share their feelings during exercise.


 3. Telling a story
We'll tell visual stories based on a portrait of a stranger from observation.
The sketch can include the full figure drawing, but the focus should be on his/her face.
Besides creating an external likeness, we will try to transfer the character's personality and our relation to it. We'll build our subjective story.
At the end of the session participants will introduce their stories and share experiences.

Supply list:
·         A small sketchbook (~A5 size) from chip paper and pages you can tear out
or
·         A package of chip A5 or A4 sheets and a clipboard.
·         Tools you like for line drawing: pencil, pen, etc...
·         Tools you like for shape drawing: wide marker, paint brush, pastels, etc...
·         Bigger sketchbook of quality paper for the last exercise.
·         Your favorite tools for the last exercise.
·         Courage and good mood :)

Workshop cost
30,00€  (120 NIS)

Registration

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