25 May 2024

Mike Hamilton – portraiture in oil, watercolour or pencil.

• Principles of portrait drawing and painting, including proportion, anatomy
• How to select references
• How to capture the likeness of the subject
• How to use shading techniques
• Colour values
• Colour temperature
• Colour intensity
• Create a sense of volume and form in the portrait.

Workshop Objective
Be exposed to and understand an approach to drawing portraits, as a foundation for painting, or as an end result in itself.

• Be able to represent a portrait in a drawing, to a reasonable degree of likeness by following the guidelines presented in the workshop.
• Be able to represent a sense of structure and depth in a portrait representation through the use of tonal values.
• Be able to apply warmer and cooler temperature pigments, as well as low and high intensity pigments, to enhance structure and depth beyond simple use of tonal values.

Note: The workshop was focused on drawing and painting portraits and was not a full workshop covering paint mixing, palette selection, and specific medium techniques for general painting.
Principles in various media were covered – each participant worked in their own medium of choice.

Saturday 28 0ctober 2023 

David strives to depict in his paintings with accurately and artistic excellence, the things we love and esteem in life and the bush veld. Wildlife and cattle have become his specialty.

His preferred mediums are soft pastels and oils. He has exhibited extensively throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Germany. He has clientele locally and in 29 foreign countries. Architectural zoo designers have purchased rights to use 17 images of his artworks to use as backdrops in the zoo cages.

David has been invited to special exhibitions for example The Wildlife Conservation Trust, W.E.S.S.A., African Wildlife Heritage Fund and Watercolour Society of South Africa: Grand Masters.

He has been commissioned to do work for the Gaberone Sun Hotel; Engen Oil Co, London; Premier Diamond Mine, Cullinan;  Auto and General Insurance Co; and numerous other companies. Since 2007 he has been commissioned to paint the trophy portrait of the winning bull of the annual Elite Growth Test Competition. David has had many articles published in the SA Art Times Magazine.

David lives in Kempton Park, where he teaches and holds workshops.

David will supply all necessary art materials. A selection of reference pictures are provided below, from which you may choose the one you want to paint. The difficulty level is indicated for each picture.

Refreshments:       Tea/coffee with biscuits will be available. Please bring a packed lunch.