This on-campus evening class at the National Art School provides an overview of the understandings and techniques involved in life drawing and painting. Students learn to build figure drawings from a gestural-anatomical foundation and then make sustained drawings and paintings from a life model holding the same pose over several sessions. Students can choose whether to focus on the portrait or the whole figure as their subject. 

The painting component of the course focuses on seeing colour in an integrated way to achieve a sense of light and atmosphere, and on the crucial planning stages that help to achieve this result. Beginning students will learn the basic skills including how to handle oil paint confidently, expressively and safely, how to analyse and paint a subject tonally (i.e. in grey scale values) and how to mix any colour they want quickly and accurately. Continuing or advanced students will learn new painting strategies ranging from painting in a planned series of layers to direct (alla prima) painting. 

National Art School (on campus), eight Wednesday evenings 6 pm to 9 pm, Feb 8 to March 29, 2023. 

• https://nas.edu.au/product-tag/dr-david-briggs/ 

Resources

This course covers a lot of ground, the aim being to introduce the student to the different areas of knowledge and skill leading to figure painting, to provide a basis for further study. A selection of books and online resources for further study of drawing the figure is provided on my page for  Anatomy for Life Drawing (on campus). This page on my site Dimensions of Colour gives some background information on the colour attribute variously known as value, lightness, greyscale value and tone, while this page summarizes paint mixing in hue-value-chroma space. For further reading on colour there is a link to a page of especially recommended resources on my page for my online colour course Understanding and Applying Colour, and a much more extensive list of colour-related resources on the twelve pages listed under COLOUR ONLINE on this site.

The MITRA forum (University of Delaware) is excellent for any questions you have about best practice for permanence of artworks .

• https://www.artcons.udel.edu/mitra/forums

Robert Henri's The Art Spirit is a collection of quotes from his classes and various addresses, collected by one of his students and loosely compiled as a book after the artist's death in 1929. It contains a wealth of wonderful observations on everything from the life of an artist to painting technique and practice. Try the ten pages on brushstrokes beginning at the pages linked to here, and if you like you can download the whole book as a pdf from lower down on the same page.

• https://archive.org/details/artspirit0000henr/page/68/mode/2up

For more inspiration and techniques for taking figure painting further, take a look at these Instagram accounts:

My other classes at NAS

Understanding and Applying Colour (online)

This is my unique, in-depth online course on a wide range of aspects of colour, and especially those relevant to painters. The course consists primarily of copiously illustrated lectures, complemented with descriptions and demonstrations of practical exercises that progress from basic exercises illustrating colour theory to painting studies. The course attracts students from all over the world and is offered in a choice of times to suit all time zones. 

Oil Painting with Colour and Light (on campus, evenings and Summer School)

This is my on-campus, practical oil painting class at NAS. It is often done by students who have previously done the Understanding and Applying Colour online course (or vice versa, the classes can be done in any order). New students work through a structured series of painting exercises progressing from tonal painting to full colour, but previous students (of either course) can choose among the exercises and work at their own pace. Generally offered in Terms 2 and 3, alternating with Painting and Drawing the Life Model in Terms 1 and 4. 

Drawing for Beginners (on campus, Saturdays)

In this course I cover the fundamentals of seeing and drawing your subject in an integrated way. We cover the use of different materials (pencil, chalk, and pen), proportions, perspective, composition, light and shade, and the expressive effects of the abstract visual elements of a drawing.  Subjects include the still life, the life model and the historic NAS campus. 

Anatomy for Life Drawing (on campus, Summer and Winter Schools)

Anatomy for Life Drawing is a five-day workshop held in the magnificent top floor studio in the Chapel at the National Art School in the Summer and Winter School for the last ten years. For beginning anatomists the focus is on the skeleton, but content is flexible for those with prior knowledge.