Mediums: Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, inks, mixed media
Level: All levels welcome
Class Dates: Thursdays, May 14-June 11, 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
What makes a portrait feel alive rather than merely accurate?
In this five-week online course, artist Tim McCormack explores portraiture as a creative process that balances observation with interpretation, structure with atmosphere, and likeness with expressive intent.
Working through both drawing and painting approaches, each class takes inspiration from a different French artist who reshaped the language of portraiture. From Daumier’s sculptural sense of volume and psychological intensity, to Toulouse-Lautrec’s fusion of caricature and Impressionist observation, to Degas’s narrative portraits placed within evocative settings, students will discover how portraits can capture gesture, mood, and character simultaneously. We will look at these masters alongside their revolutionary female contemporaries, such as Berthe Morisot and Suzanne Valadon, whose work offers a unique sensitivity to presence and bold, ‘sketch-first’ honesty.
Through live demonstrations, close analysis of masterworks, and guided exercises, participants will explore how line, tone, colour, and composition work together to build portraits that feel both structurally convincing and emotionally resonant. Emphasis will be placed on the head and shoulders as a dynamic field of movement and design, where silhouette, shadow, and rhythm transform observation into personal expression.
This course is ideal for artists who want to deepen their portrait skills while developing a more imaginative, character-driven approach to drawing and painting the human face.
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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