Introduction to Portrait Drawing
Spring Class | Available
This six-week class is for artists who’d like to draw portraits with greater confidence and facility. You’ll experiment with new creative ideas and materials expanding your range of expression and learn tips and tricks that will strengthen your studio practice. You’ll explore both the creative and technical sides of portrait drawing such as likeness, the underlying structures of the head, neck and shoulders, how to create strong tonal structure, inventing light and shade, as well as more painterly approaches to drawing using graphite and charcoal. Portrait I review as needed.
Recommended: Portrait Drawing I, intermediate college drawing, or equivalent experience.
Schedule Note:
The Community Arts Center will be closed for Spring Break from 3/29/26-4/5/26.
No class on Wednesday 4/1/26.
- Please pay a $10 model fee to the instructor on the first day of class.
Please bring these materials to each class:
- Small hardbound sketchbook for making notes and daily practice.
- 9"x12" or larger pad of white drawing paper such as Strathmore 400 or Blick Studio Drawing.
- Knead-able eraser
- 2B, 4B, and HB pencils or equivalent drawing leads as well as softer/harder grades as needed.
- 6B Graphite sticks and/or woodless pencil
- Medium grade vine charcoal
- Pencil sharpener with built in shavings catcher
Ra Friedman
RA Friedman received a BA in Scene Design from Harpur College, SUNY and an MFA in Painting from Louisiana State University. He has exhibited his work nationally in venues including InLiquid in Philadelphia, The Merchant’s House Museum, Pratt Institute Manhattan, and The New Bedford Art Museum. Friedman is an instructor at Pratt Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His recent work, The Covid-19 Portrait Project, has been featured on WHYY, ABC and NBC TV and published in the Broad Street Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Jewish Exponent.