Face to Face! Urban Portraits That Tell Stories

I'm happy and excited to invite you to my workshop, which will focus on what I love the most - sketching people, and particularly - in portraits and how tell the story through a human face.

Date:
April 27, 2018

10:00 AM - 1:30 PM

Workshop location: 

Tel Aviv, Israel. (exact location TBA)

Space is limited: contact ultramarin71[at]gmail.com to make a reservation and arrange payment.

Maximum number of participants: 15

Skill level: Suitable for all ability levels.

"Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is in the face. It tells all." - David Hockney

For me there is no more interesting subject than sketching people, and of course the most fascinating part is - their faces. When I can't pull out my sketchbook, I catch myself sketching with my eyes - watching the celebration of the human faces that constant surrounds us - men and women, adults and children, faces in all shapes and colors - talking, laughing, crying, telling us about themselves in all sorts of ways.

In this workshop we'll practice drawing portraits, but not in a traditional academic approach.

By doing series of fun and freeing up exercises we will learn:

·         to overcome the fear of drawing faces

·         to free up from automatic approaches and selections

·         to discover what is the essence of "likeness" in portraiture - how to get the real, profound likeness, and not only the external one

·         not to mechanically copy  reality , but to observe the essentials from the artistic point of view, and to sacrifice the secondary

·         to adopt new approaches and understandings

·         to connect to the emotional side of drawing

·         to strengthen hand-eye coordination

·         to improve the ability of observation

·         to enjoy the process without thinking about the result

·         to see personality and story in each character

·         to tell the story with the portrait

Schedule

Meet and greet - 15 minutes

Exercises, 3 sessions -  30 minutes - 1 hour duration each

Final conclusion - sharing our work and insights - 15 minutes

1. Warming-up  duels

Participants will divide into pairs and draw each other in three different exercises:

1.     Eye-hand connection

·         Blind contour - draw without looking at the paper.

·         From memory - draw without looking at the model

2.     Exaggeration (caricature)

·         Strengthen essentials and exaggerate

3.     Capture emotions

·         Simultaneous sketching - look at each other expressing certain emotions.

Finally, we will share the portraits and discuss what each exercise contributes.

 2. Going out!

After the warm-up, we will sketch fast portraits of people passing by on location.

We'll give a title to each portrait. The title can show what we think about the character or what she/he looks like.

We'll try to apply what we've learned in the previous exercises and pay attention to hand-eye coordination, capture the expressions of emotions and strengthen the essential and what is authentic in each character we sketch.

At the end of the section, participants will display as many portraits as they made in various approaches and will share their feelings during exercise.

 3. Telling a story

We'll tell visual stories based on a portrait of a stranger from observation.

The sketch can include the full figure drawing, but the focus should be on his/her face.

Besides creating an external likeness, we will try to transfer the character's personality and our relation to it. We'll build our subjective story.

At the end of the session participants will introduce their stories and share experiences.

Supply list:

·         A small sketchbook (~A5 size) from chip paper and pages you can tear out

or

·         A package of chip A5 or A4 sheets and a clipboard.

·         Tools you like for line drawing: pencil, pen, etc...

·         Tools you like for shape drawing: wide marker, paint brush, pastels, etc...

·         Bigger sketchbook of quality paper for the last exercise.

·         Your favorite tools for the last exercise.

·         Courage and good mood :)

Workshop cost

30,00€  (120 NIS)

Registration

ultramarin71@gmail.com

Purim Sketchcrawl

Every year I want to set our monthly sketchcrawl at the Purim street party, and every year I afraid to make life of my fellow sketchers too tough :) This year I dared to do it. Now, when it's over, all I can say is - well done! we're amazing group! It was so fun!
We met one hour before the party started, stated by sketching security guys, busy by preparing to the event.

my friend Rachel is ready to the sketchcrawl :)

policemen and thieves

people are waiting to enter to the party

Finally, the party were officially opened and Rachel and me entered to the State Square together with hundred of people wearing colorful costumes. The amount of people were relatively not so big, we could even buy a beer without staying in the line and find plenty of place on the grass to sit down and relax. It was so fun to sit under the sprig sun, to absorb the atmosphere and to observe the public wearing costumes and moving around. At the beginning it was difficult to concentrate, but little by little the beer and the atmosphere were absorbed inside me and I started to sketch. Each time I "hunted" with my eyes interesting character or interaction I tried to put it on the paper.

The music and the amount of people increased together with my sketching pace. It was almost meditative - free and unconscious flow. At some point I woke up and felt overwhelmed. Just in time when Rachel reminded me that we need to return to the meeting point.
It was huge fun, fantastic experience for the people sketching lovers!
I'm already waiting for the next year :)

Rally against the deportation

Maybe I'm naive, but being yesterday together with tens thousands of people protesting against the deportation of refugees in South Tel Aviv made feel hopeful. Hopeful that after all we're all human and that what will lead us at the final.

What is hidden inside the garden

I knew that setting meeting point for our Sketchcrawl at Levinsky Garden will be challenging. Tel Aviv is a city of contrasts, even in the most touristic place you'll find contrasts between new and old, beautiful and ugly, rich and poor. Levinsky Garden and next to it Neve Shaanan neighborhood long time ago turned to be kind of a different country, populated by immigrants it has a life of its own and you can see straight away who's a citizen and who's a tourist. We felt a bit uncomfortable to come there with our fancy sketching tools to "hunt" our objects.
I decided to start from sketching the surrounding, despite that what interested me the most were, of course, the people. I wanted to give myself time to observe the place from distance, to absorb and to be absorbed. The garden was very nice, wide and blooming. The atmosphere there were very calm, everything were easygoing. People - black men mostly - passed slowly, stopped in groups for a few minutes of conversation and continued to pass. There were a few "constant" - the man with the orange shirt who was doing his morning washing near the garden tap. And the man in the white undershirt who was walking back and forth while turning his hands - performing strange gymnastic exercises. Nobody created eye contact and didn't approached. I felt detached and not belonging.

I moved to the edge of the garden and started to sketch people. Here as well nobody approached, just a few asked if we're drawing them. Most of them were busy talking one to another.

among black men only who occupied the benches around suddenly set down Asian woman, smoked her cigarette and moved on

I moved to the playground where I found Nitzan and her friends, and around them gathered a group of children. At the begging children were suspicious - why would group of adult people draw in the middle of their's playground? But very soon they all joined sketching. It was so gladdening scene, with a lot of great energies - the real spirit of urban sketching which creates interaction with the surrounding!

one of the mothers in the garden

children are sketching

I also did some sketches, but mostly were chatting with the children and taking pictures. Our sketchcrawl was coming to its end. We spread out our sketches on the ground, children looked at them together with us and asked when we'll come again. Some of them joined us to the final photo :)


Here are some sketches I did in the Eritrean restaurant, were we were eating with Nathan after the sketchecrawl.

beautiful couple in the restaurant

This watercolor sketch was done a few days earlier, when Nathan and me came to check the location. The pastoral garden with complicated stories inside it. We should come back!

People from HaTikva Market

Hot Friday morning at the beginning of July - nothing couldn't stop us to meet for the sketchcrawl at the HaTikva Market - small market in the South Tel Aviv.
It's really perfect place for sketching, with plenty of authentic stories, colorful characters, without poses and without air conditioner ;) Yes, it's challenging, but once you got the adrenaline of sketching, you don't care about the heat, the shouts, you simply flow with them.
I started sketching from the entrance to the market - vibrant place where people move non stop, caring their shopping bags - you need to hurry on Friday morning to be ready for the Sabbath evening!

We were sitting opposite to small Shawarma place, so I couldn't not to sketch its owner, chatting with his customers about everything - from politics to arts and everything in between...

After the warm up we dived into the market! I couldn't help not to stop near the beautiful melons-seller, reminding by herself ripe melon ;)  

In the meat place were more reddish atmosphere ;)

Some more sketches from the central avenue of the market - and time was up.

There is nothing better than sketching in the authentic place, were real life is going on. Such a place fascinates me million times more than any fancy aesthetic place, here are people without poses, and stories without poses. I must to come back for more!

Music, to draw it!

Yesterday I was sketching at very cool event - "Music, to draw it!" It was organized by Tel-Avivian internet radio station Teder, which consistently organizes music evens in various styles. People in all ranges of age - young, old, families with children, were sitting by the tables equipped by markers and paper, and drawing, accompanying by music. Great local beer and pizza were adding to the atmosphere. Without a doubt, music and drawing (and beer) - is the perfect formula :)

The parliament at HaTikva Market

HaTikva Market, a small market in the poor south Tel Aviv HaTikva neighborhood, actually is a perfect place for sketching! It's much more calm, wide, clean and authentic than his famous brother - HaCarmel. There are a lot of atmosphere, nobody interested in what you're doing - it filled mostly by locals, and they are busy by doing their shopping and nothing else.
At one of the corners of the market there is a great place for getting kubbe soup. People that are sitting around a table and chatting look like  an everyday comers - kind of a local "parliament".

Looks like we found our next Sketchcrawl location!

Saturday on the beach

Summer is here in all its power and, of course, it's pretty hot. So, if you can't beat them - join them! The best way to enjoy the weather is to be on the beach, to feel the breeze, to have a drink, to enter to the fresh water and... to sketch, of course - beach is always full of perfect models!

All colors of rainbow - sketching at the Pride Parade.

I checked very well that I have a sufficient range of colors in my pencil case before I left to our last sketchcrawl - we decided to go and sketch at the Tel Aviv Pride Parade! I wasn't sure that I'll be able to concentrate, it was possible that this colorful human mess would sweep me away and wouldn't allow me to be in the position of the observer. It took me a while until I pulled off my sketchbook, but once I did, I couldn't stop!
The atmosphere was great, finally nobody cared about the group of people sketching what's going on - anyone around us were more peculiar and strange than we were, and set of colored pencils hanged on my neck looked like a small pride flag.

It was really awesome experience, now I need to wait a whole year until the next time!