Drawing Classes in Amsterdam, the portrait

During my drawing classes in Amsterdam, I give students the option to learn to create portraits.  This is usually an important segment of a drawing lessons program and must be covered fairly extensively.

A good portrait consists of many layers of knowledge which come together to create great resemblance as well as a good piece of art.

As with everything else, good drawing is the basis, and once this is established, and a strong composition is found, the chances of a successful piece are greatly enhanced.  Amsterdam offers a great option of small ateliers which bring live models in, for art students, professionals and hobbyists alike to draw and paint any way they like.

For aspiring artists who want to learn to draw the portrait, this should be a regular part of their artistic practice.  However, lots of practice and a 'feel' for how to capture someone's likeness can never compete with strong knowledge of the anatomy of the skull, and a solid method of how to capture it.  This is something I strongly emphasize during my Amsterdam drawing lessons.

The reason is simple.  If you look at portraits made by amateurs, and even by the masters of the 17th century, you usually find that the face looks round and smooth.  While this was highly appreciated back in those days, and will make you feel like you can draw a portrait, we have since then, found out that as it happens, it is better to draw certain areas as flat.  A combination of roundness and angular sections makes for a far stronger statement on learning to draw a portrait.

During drawing classes, the only way to achieve such a result, is to have clear and solid knowledge of the planes of the head.  This brings excellence of drawing and clarity of structure to the head you're drawing.  You're no longer drawing the outline of a head and putting the features in it.  You are instead drawing the volume of a skull, with its particular structure, and once you've captured it, the features fall into place almost automatically.

This is an approach that John Singer Sargent, the great master advocated, and which only started to make sense to me once I learned that, when drawing a portrait, you must assess the underlying structure in order to succeed.  Features move and change, but the skull remains exactly the same, and this is what you're after.

During my Amsterdam drawing lessons I make use of great tools such as the Loomis method in order to bring structure to this understanding.

So in conclusion, lots of practice is very necessary to be a good portrait artist, but all the practice in the world will not get you to the peak of your abilities if it's not founded on sound knowledge.

Better to put in the practice hours while you are solidly informed of what you're doing than to blindly try to strike luck. Not doing this, you will risk being someone who after many years of attempting portraits, still runs into simple mistakes of alignment and proportion, and who's lukewarm art is surpassed by the crisp and beautiful art of a knowledgeable counterpart.

Drawing Classes in Amsterdam, for the Patient Painter

My academic drawing classes in Amsterdam for beginners and intermediate artists who wish to learn the way the old masters learned the craft.

When joining a drawing class in the academic style you may discover that some of your ideas about how to draw, and whether you were born to do it or not are not exactly correct.  In a sense everybody was born to draw, and nobody was born to draw.

The most brilliant draftsmen (drawing artists) from the past, some of which indeed lived in Amsterdam, reached the level they did, not through flairs of genius which was obvious from an early age.  It's almost guaranteed that their first doodles were as poor as those of everyone else who wanted to learn drawing.  The difference is that they didn't reach any wrong conclusions from this, other than the obvious one:  they had never done it before, and therefore, a bad result was inevitable.

Turn the clock forward 3 or 4 centuries and the image of the artist shifted from that of a craftsman to that of a creative bohemian.  I find this to be a terrible idea, especially for people considering to take drawing classes.  They may give things a try, and when their drawings are not brilliant and effortless, the conclusion is: "Oh well, I guess I'm just not the artistic type".

The title I used in this entry, the 'patient painter' stands for someone who above all is willing to put in the time and the effort, and go the distance.  The only failed drawing is the one that you consider finished before it reaches a standard that you consider excellent, whether produced by yourself or somebody else.

Many of the discussions in my drawing classes in Amsterdam, will revolve around the idea of measuring thoroughly, slowing down, using your lines and tools carefully in the beginning, almost as if you were planning a crime.  Did I mention slowing down?

Take for example the portrait of a religious man which I made in a visit to my home country of Guatemala this past march:

I frankly don't recall how many hours it took to create, but I do know it did not happen in one afternoon.  It took days of careful observation, of letting the work 'rest' and coming back the next morning with a fresh pair of eyes and also trying different compositional decisions of lines, values, edges and atmosphere, all of which you will learn in my Amsterdam drawing lessons, and which are difficult to crack in a couple of sessions, unless you are an accomplished master with decades of drawing under your belt.

This is one of the reasons that during my drawing classes in Amsterdam I strongly encourage people to carefully choose what they want to draw.  It has to be something that keeps you motivated to give your best and stick to it as long as humanly possible.  Until it is perfect and not a moment less.

What you will find during the drawing lessons, is that the secret behind amazing works of draftsmanship has little to do with old secrets or artistic genius.  It's just plain old hard work, and some techniques that should be always kept in mind.

So I guess the bad news is that it's not easy, but the good news is that anyone can do it!