Play with a range of drawing and painting media to create portraits filled with expressive colour and movement. Starting with photos and other reference material, students will be shown how to develop a completed drawing which will tell a story about the subject of the portrait. Several smaller sketches will be done as a process of “thinking on paper”, to develop the study drawing.

Working over broad washes of colour and on toned paper, students will use ink, pastel and charcoal to create portraits from photos. This course emphasizes the freedom of building on “happy” mistakes and reworking to create an interesting figurative work that engages the eye with textures, layers and ghosts of previous images. The course will cover some basic drawing and colour principles and is designed for the beginner who wants to have fun with colour and texture and for the more experienced painter who wants to explore the freedom of enjoying making “mistakes”. Students will be working from their own photos or those provided by the tutor.

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Lesley’s training in art has been through various workshops, as well as a Certificate in Fine Art (Seaforth TAFE) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, National Art School. In 2008 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Art Society and is also a member of Portrait Artists of Australia. Lesley has been a finalist in both the Portia Geach Portrait and the Shirley Hannon Portrait Prizes. She has also won the overall, landscape and drawing prizes in the North Sydney Art Prize, several years running and in 2010 was awarded the open and works on paper prizes at the City of Ryde Art Awards. She has also won the Robert Le Gay Brereton Drawing Prize, awarded through the Art Gallery of NSW.