Watercolor Portraits with Jessica Lily is a 4-class sequential series all about painting your own photograph in soft, realistic watercolor. For the advanced beginner, intermediate and advanced watercolorists, or for portrait artists working in other media looking to consider and play with watercolor portraits.
Course Schedule:
Feb 16 | Week 1 - Composition
Mar 2 | Week 2 - Values & Underpainting
Apr 6 | Week 3 - Washes & Color
Apr 27 | Week 4 - Details
In week 1, we will work on building our drawing and selecting our composition. We will look at the planes in the face, as well as the parts of the face that hold volume and recesses. We will also talk about the properties of watercolor paper, sizing, tracing and erasing. We will use a tracing paper to establish our shapes, and then draw details and dimension. Then, we will select our palette and swatch out our colors!
In week 2, we will talk about values, and study a value map of our portrait photographs. We will practice lifting and soft edges. Then, we will paint our underpainting.
In week 3, we will work on smooth and clean washes in our warm reds and yellows, building value throughout our shapes, and represent our dark masses. We will also use a lot of lifting to add a sculptural element to our practice and build soft volume.
In week 4, we will work on details! We will add smaller textures to wrinkles, eyelashes, hair, and make those eyes sparkle. All of our darkest darks will go in at this stage, and we will use our tiny brushes to look at my favorite part, the tiny spots and freckles. We will have a group critique at the end of class to support each other and talk about what we have learned.
In between our classes, participants will take their portraits home to complete each stage. If you miss a class, there will be a video class option available to make sure everyone is ready for the next class.
Click here to see Jessica’s recommended supplies list.
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$160 4-Week Series, $25 optional materials kit add-on per series (includes one sheet of 11x14 200 lb Saunders 100% cotton paper, and use of teacher's professional grade paints, brushes, pencils, erasers, resist and additional materials.)
Course Capacity: 8