‘Portraiture – A route to character and likeness’- a weekend course with artist Toby Wiggins 5-6 July

Sandy Hill Arts is delighted to offer a two day portraiture course with acclaimed artist Toby Wiggins who has outlined the course below:

Working from life, we will start drawing to explore our sitter and develop greater visual understanding. We will then progress to ‘alla prima’ studies in oil and finally bring all together in a sustained portrait study developing likeness into character and a personal response to our sitter.

A two day course.

Day 1. 

Fixing your interest; find out what particular aspects of the sitter are visually exciting to you through multiple quick studies from differing angles and distances.

Finding your own ‘sweet spot’; moving towards the position and angle that offers you the most compelling composition.

Reveal the sitter; clear, linear drawing to explore and explain structure and proportion.

Darkness and Light; a ‘considered’ tonal drawing to explore the light source, form and space. 

Finally we will look at warm and cool ‘grounds’ and what they can do for our portraiture. 

Day 2.

Getting it down; You will now translate your new knowledge into paint through at least one, possibly two, head and shoulders studies – The technique will be ‘wet into wet’ painting onto the boards or canvases pre prepared. Technique will be explained with a demonstration for those new to it.

We will work with a limited palette to begin, focusing on developing form through tonal relationships then adding more colour to gain a sense of warm and cool, looking at local and perceived colour and how to use it. We will also look at how to mix paint, handle the brush, palette knife and use specific techniques of application to make different marks and build surfaces.

To fix, enhance and resolve; The afternoon will be given over to one small/medium scale portrait based on all the working studies so far. 

You will arrive at this point with a greater confidence, a deeper insight and knowledge of your subject and so will be perfectly placed to push character and likeness far beyond your initial observations.

We will explore issues as we go along such as reaching a composition, deciding on scale, drawing and ‘under painting’, fixing a good ‘likeness’ and enhancing this via multiple critical adjustments to reveal a more developed sense of character and a very personal response to our sitter. 

About Toby Wiggins

Toby Wiggins studied at Bournemouth College of Art and Design (Shelley Park – 1990), Falmouth School of Art (1991-94) and the Royal Academy Schools (1996 – 99). He was made a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2006. He has exhibited widely, winning various awards for his work, the most recent being the ‘Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture’ in 2023 with his portrait of the Dorset hedgelayer; Russell Woodham. Toby was born in the Isle of Purbeck and continues to live and work here finding great inspiration in thelandscape and its people.

Materials for the course to be brought by the participants

Pencils – between 2B – 7B, any graphite sticks, conte pencils, charcoal, compressed charcoal. Eraser, sharpener/sharpening knife, small sketch book, drawing paper and drawing board (any of the above that suits you for drawing purposes)

Oil paint – a full colour palette that can include any of the following if you have them:alizarin crimson, cadmium red or scarlet lake, lemon yellow, viridian green, ultramarine blue, a violet and a white ( flake, zinc or titanium) and a black (mars/lamp). You should also include one or more of the following earth colours: yellow ochre, Paynes grey, Vandyke brown, burnt umber, raw umber or a similar earth colour.  You will not need them all so don’t go buying everything –use what you have as well.

A selection of hog hair bristle brushes ranging in size from 0.5inch wide to 2inches wide (approx) plus larger ‘household’ brushes or varnishing brushes ( 3 or 4 “) if you can find one or two. Any other synthetic or sable brushes may have some use so bring them along if you own them. Basically a selection of whatever you own, but try to include a large 2 inch brush

palette knife(s) various.

palette  – wooden or glass/perspex or waxed paper ( whatever you like to use)

An oil – which could be refined linseed, poppy, safflower or other 

zest-it or ‘sans odour’ substitute for turpentine ( I am happy if Sandy Hills is happy for you to use pure turpentine)

cotton rags/ paper towels  and an apron

Any additional material that you might want to try using such as – beeswax paste, marble dust, painting mediums such as ‘painting butter’ etc. They all have a use… sometimes. 

I will bring a selection of these, plus examples of different supports and extra rags for everyone.

1 small canvas (primed) and 1 small board (primed) at about 12” x 10”/ 30x25cm (approx). Both can remain as white, but if you have time and know what this is, please paint ‘grounds’ on them : one warm (ochre or van dyck brown or similar ), one cool (an umber, terre Verte or paynes grey or similar ). To be fully dry for the course. You can use acrylic colour for this if you wish – we can paint over with oils and it will dry very quickly. If you don’t have time, we will do at end of day one and discuss why. So don’t worry about it if you are unsure.

Finally bring a slightly larger canvas or board at around 16” x 14”/ 40x35cm and treat similarly.