'Learn to Enjoy Painting Portraits and Figures' : with Paul Taggart – Figure Study Workshop

As part of the ‘Learn To Enjoy Painting Portraits and Figures’ series we will be adding occasional workshops, step-by-step tutorials and more, which are dedicated to this particular area of painting and drawing. Portraits and figure paintings are central to Artist & Author Paul Taggart’s work as a collected Professional Fine Artist. Tutoring people in how to enjoy painting portraits and figure paintings is also Paul’s passion. Viewers will soon recognise that enthusiasm and will benefit from over forty years of experience spent sharing his knowledge and traditional techniques. THIS FIGURE STUDY WORKSHOP is centred entirely on Paul Taggart working on-the-spot at an album launch event within the confines of a nightclub. Not the ideal place to paint, but it serves to demonstrate that whatever the subject, wherever the venue, whatever the light conditions; something dynamic can be achieved. It is not about a perfectly crafted portrait………………..this figure study is about capturing the essence of the occasion, of chronicling an event as it happens – known as a ‘Narrative Painting’, or a ‘Conversation Piece’. Musicians have a particular way of holding their instruments, of holding their bodies as they perform; which is their ‘tell’ and it is this that ‘portrays’ them. Enjoy this for what it is, a live on-the-spot painting, filmed in near-dark conditions – captured in real-time to share with you, as a way of showing that painting portraits and figures can be loose and evocative – they do not need to be posed and stylised and slavishly worked. So throw away those preconceived ideas that painting figures and portraits is difficult. This is an area that many avoid, which is a pity, for it is to deny themselves a hugely rewarding painting experience.