Painting Figures and Portraits - May/June 2017

Pam working on her portrait painting

On the 1st June my course on Painting Figures and Portraits came to an end.  This was a four week course with students painting with oils, acrylics and watercolours.  One student used pastels with great success.  

Overall, although the students found the course challenging, all of them rose to the challenge and created paintings that were better than their original expectations. Half the class had never painted a portrait before or even painted a figure which makes the results even more amazing!  I think the paintings speak for themselves. There are three or four highly successful ones and the rest follow closely behind.  Only one person's work is not shown by their choice although in my opinion this was one of the best.

Portrait painting by Pam 2017

Portrait painting in pastels by Mandy 2017

Portrait painting by Vicki 2017

Portrait painting by Jean 2017

Portrait painting by Liz 2017

Painting of Napoleon by John 2017

Painting by Jean 2017

Thank you to all the students who made this course a success.  If you would like to join one of my art classes or have one-to-one classes please contact me using the blog form below. 

My next course will be en plein air painting at Shanklin Chine on the 14th of July - look forward to seeing you there!  I

Happy Painting!

Lee 🎨

Painting Night Skies - May 2017



Laraine painting her night sky composition

This was the first time I had run a course on painting night skies.  As research beforehand i took photographs of coloured pieces of card at different times on a sunny day starting at 10am and ending at 9.30pm.  The pieces of card were the primary colours of yellow, blue and red. This was to determine the effect of diminishing light on the coloured card.  Through the series of photographs it was clear to see that as the day drew to a close the coloured card became cooler in colour. Most interestingly at 9.30pm the yellow card was only just visible, the red card had completely disappeared and the even stranger was that the blue card was still visible.

On the next night I took photographs of the scene which we were going to paint in class.  I took these photographs as before at various times of the day - from 2pm, 5pm, 7pm and 9pm.  The results were as expected that as there was less light there was less colour. The one taken at 5pm especially had become washed out as if devoid of colour, but in contrast the one taken last of all at 9pm had taken on an atmospheric appeal of muted purples, indigo blues, highlighted by pinpricks of light from the pier.

The paintings created by the students are shown here.  These were on the whole successful and were a very good lesson in mixing extremely subtle shades and tones of the same colour.

Original painting by Laraine 2017

Original painting by Andrew 2017

Original painting by Kate 2017

Original painting by Liz 2017

Original painting by Rosemary 2017

Original painting by Peter 2017

Original painting by Doreen 2017

Original painting by Sandra 2017

Thank you to all the students who took on the challenge painting night skies and for allowing me to share their work on my blog.  This was an amazing class to teach and I am sure you will agree the paintings are very accomplished.

If you would like to join one of my courses or have one-to-one classes please contact me using the blog contact form below.

Happy Painting!

Lee 🎨