A portrait from life at NHIA

[Rob Sullivan]

This past semester, I've had the wonderful opportunity to teach Portrait Painting (as well as a Beginning Drawing class) at the New Hampshire Institute of art in Manchester, N.H.

There are only four students in the class, so I thought this was a good opportunity for me to paint alongside them, rather than take up a whole 3-hour class with just me doing a demo. That way, we could all progress together. Of course, I still have to teach them, so I end up spending perhaps 20 minutes to a half hour at the easel each class.

None of the students had painted a portrait from life before, so we "warmed up" on a plaster bust of a simplified "planar" head. I had them employ the same technique of underpainting in raw umber and the lay-in of the opaque (in this case, monochromatic) oil paint. [This will be expounded upon in following posts]

Here's my quickie rendition of "Ike" (he looks like Dwight Eisenhower when seen in profile).