PORTRAITURE WORKSHOP WITH MORRIS YANG - WRAP UP

Painting a portrait can be a real challenge, but in this workshop Morris showed us some the techniques to use to remove the fear.  He started the day by giving us some hints on how to improve our confidence in painting portraits and other subjects by simplifying the shapes and emphasised the three main things we should concentrate on – Brushstrokes, Edges and Colour.  He then showed us the structural form on which to base your portrait as well as the colours he uses.  Then followed his demo using a photocopy of an old master painting as his subject. He started by using a thin layer of orange, approximately where the face would be, using odourless solvent to thin the paint.  He then plotted the underlying structure,using burnt sienna on top of the orange layer, using the principle of thirds.  Continuing with the burnt sienna he defined the eye sockets and other shadow areas.  Mixing a darker colour using ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and viridian, he then added this colour in the darker areas.  Then came the background, which was a lighter grey.  As the demo continued the portrait, almost magically, took on the look of his sample image.  

It was then our turn to paint the basic structure like his demo, using either the photo he supplied or one of the photocopies of old masters, which had to show us, as our reference.  This was followed by our delicious morning tea supplied by Catherine Feder and Bronwyn Hammond.  After morning tea, we continued with our paintings to get them to the stage where we could add more details.  It was difficult to stop for lunch as we were all concentrating on our work.

After lunch he continued to demonstrate the adding of details but noting the direction of the brushstrokes to define the shapes and softening some edges.  We were all so impressed at how easy he made it look and how quick the process was.  By the end of the day most of us had finished our portraits and were very proud of what we had achieved.