Mediums: Oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, ink, and illustrative approaches
Level: All levels welcome
Class Dates: Thursdays, September 3-October 1, 2026
Class Times:
• 10:30 am-1:00 pm Pacific Time
• 1:30 pm-4:00 pm Eastern Time
• 6:30 pm-9:00 pm UK Time
In this five-week course, artist Tim McCormack will share ways to move beyond simply capturing a likeness to creating expressive portraits that reveal mood, presence, and the subtle inner life of your subject.
Drawing inspiration from influential portrait painters working after 1950- including Alice Neel, Gerhard Richter, Kaye Donachie, Michaël Borremans, Jenny Saville, and Claire Tabouret- you will explore how contemporary artists use color, brushwork, composition, and abstraction to create expressive, emotionally resonant portraits. Rather than studying art history, you’ll apply these ideas directly to your own painting practice.
Through live demonstrations and guided exercises, discover how to develop looser, more confident brushwork, learn to balance abstraction with realism, use light and shadow to strengthen form, and refine facial features without sacrificing spontaneity or expression. You’ll also gain the confidence to make bolder color choices and embrace a more personal, intuitive approach to portrait painting.
By the end of the course, you will have a deeper understanding of expressive portrait painting and of the tools needed to create portraits that feel alive, authentic, and uniquely your own.
In stock
$295.00
Tim McCormack is an accomplished artist with thirty years of teaching experience to college students and adult learners. He was the Lead Instructor in the Figure Drawing Stream in the highly respected Bachelor of Animation Program at Sheridan College for ten years. He has taught portrait and landscape painting, as well as drawing for absolute beginners and background painting for animation. Tim creates landscape, portraiture and figurative art and is inspired by many drawing materials that he finds in and outside art supply stores. A graduate of OCAD, he has had several solo shows of watercolours, oils and pastels. His work is found in private collections.
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