Hyper Realism

Eley Portrait

I am not a hyper realist artist, and nor do I wish to be. However this is my attempt at painting in the hyper realism style, created through a master class workshop at The Art Academy (Adelaide based art school run by Robin Eley). What I wanted to achieve from the workshop was knowledge about form, and how this is created through tone and colour, and also mixing skin tone from the correct palette. We all painted the same painting from a photo, so I don’t know the woman (left side in case it isn’t obvious!)

Robin Eley is a generous teacher who happily shares his knowledge, and mastery of paint technique with a class of roughly thirty people, over a five day intensive workshop. He’s also a super cool dude who is living the dream as a successful artist in Los Angeles. I think it is quite safe to say that he still calls Australia home, and shall return to our fare shores once he has made his mark on the world. Other notable Adelaide artists such as Tsering Hannaford also teach at The Academy. The next up coming workshop is in January next year with David Jon Kassan and Shana Levesen. I highly recommend the Academy for those artists who wish to develop their painting technique. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the camaraderie gained by meeting other like minded souls.

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Portrait from the Academy

Nina

Whilst at the Academy of Fine Art in Florence, I undertook my first ‘site size’ portrait. Having always painted from photographs this is my first portrait done from a live model. It was a first also in that I had to draw with a paintbrush without having sketched her in charcoal onto the canvas first (which is how I normally work). Not only was I surprised at how easy it was, but also how accurately this can be accomplished with only the use of string for measuring, just as they did in the Renaissance era. The resemblance to the model was also uncanny and accurate. Yes I should have had her pose for the photo as per the portrait,…but you can see she was quite pleased.