I’ve been taking a wonderful and challenging class with Oliver Hoeller. Oliver is an amazing instructor and this is the third class I’ve taken with him. He is a scientist, illustrator, urban sketcher, and lives in Vienna. The class I am taking now is called Narrative Portraits, and deals with rendering creative portraits of people in an urban sketching setting.
We have been working from photo references for several weeks and learning important skills in portraiture.
These sketches below were done in colored pencil, and are designed by identifying big shapes, as well as shadow shapes and values.
We then worked with lines in pen, learning the facial structure and how to depict that using pens.
After creating a set of drawings, we then used watercolor in colorful and creative ways to create expression and mood and highlight areas of the portrait that were interesting to us.
Finally, we used acrylic matte medium and watercolor to work over the colored pencil sketches. This was a new way of working for me, and was a lot of fun!
We have two sessions left, and I can’t wait to try my new skills on location. We will incorporate portraits with other small sketches to tell a story of that person’s life.
Oliver is a fantastic instructor, and I highly recommend him! I have been stretched and challenged by all that I’ve learned, and I am so glad I’m taking his class!