New Ecourse - Portraits - Your Art, Your Way

I am very excited to be immersed in creating my brand new Ecourse – Portraits – Your Art, Your Way. Whilst Unearth Gather Create and Drawn to Expression included a variety of subject matter from portraits to still life to landscape, I have been wanting to create a course that immersed both myself and the students in the more in-depth study of portraiture for a while now.

Portraits – Your Art, Your Way will only be my third new online course in three years and this reflects my desire to have an extended period of time in-between the creation of each new course. I am continuing to develop and grow in my own artwork which is of huge importance to me both as an artist and a teacher. Over a year has passed since I created Drawn to Expression and in that time I have practised, studied, refined my techniques, worked hard on creating art that is unique to me, continued to discover my own voice, created artwork that I love and some that I have hated!

Whilst both my previous courses featured portraiture (amongst other things) this is my first course to focus on that one subject alone and in-depth and it takes elements of my development as an artist since I first walked through those main doors and Edinburgh College of Art around eighteen years ago. In this course I take the foundations that were laid in Unearth Gather Create and Drawn to Expression and immerse ourselves deeper into further study – always with the emphasis on encouraging students to find their own voice in creating art that is unique and expressive.

This course is a focused on drawing and painting – creating studies using simple materials before we delve into creating more finished works of art with pastels and acrylics and I expect there will be a couple of demonstrations in Oils too. There will also be time dedicated to research and observation as I prompt students to expand their knowledge of the art world to enable them to make choices and grow in their own work.

I have been busy writing, researching and developing the course content for around the last 2 months (this is my process – lots of hours of work before I even get to the recording of the tutorials) and this week I begin filming in earnest. This might be interesting in my new studio and with a noisy bakery that seems to be open irregular hours at the back of the building. There is also a mainline train track just a short distance away. I have already had some experience with filming my lesson for Lifebook 2016 so I know some of what to expect – a fair bit of stopping and starting I should think! And some creative editing …. and possibly a small disclaimer at the beginning of the course as sometimes I don’t hear the noise of the train as I am so immersed in what I am doing. It is not too loud at all – it is just there. But it is still a huge improvement from the constant sirens, busy traffic and road works that I had to work around at my last home in the city. Here the low rumble of the train a few fields over and lots chatter from the birds outside on the farm will seem like bliss in comparison.

You can find out more about the course schedule and content over at my Art School site where I have a fairly comprehensive description of the course and try to answer any questions that are likely to come up in the FAQ section. So if you would like to find out more then please head over there.

I am also excited to be in the process of having my Art School website completely re-designed and re-built so that it will eventually hold all my classes and resources in one place. More on that later!