*Recommended level: all levels welcome, some drawing experience is ideal
Edoardo Durdin (1988) grew up in Rome caught a taste for classical drama and theatricality at a very young age. He started his technical training in 2010 at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence and furthered his technique under the personal instruction of master painter Alexey Steele in search of greater allegorical compositions, practicing portraiture, the figure, and plein-air.
He invites you to join this special 3-day intensive Figure Painting Workshop, to explore a mastery of tonality and values to build accurately on each consecutive mark made. Students will be encouraged to develop their own handwriting and find a composition that speaks to them. Students will work primarily from female models: the female form enables us to emphasize the structural planes and the nuanced volumes of the figure, and is therefore considered the ideal and most complete practice of painting.
We will be working from the live model in a variety of short and long poses, each to garnish stamina, speed and accuracy. Students will explore proportion, tonality, and color theory, and will work with limited colors based on the Zorn Palette in order to simplify the transition into oils and apply the entire spectrum of the color-theory in approachable terms. (More advanced students may use the optional extended palette - see materials list.) Models will pose under differently lit circumstances to prepare students for any setting, which will incorporate these theories into a comprehensive understanding of the human form.
Durdin will be demonstrating his full process of painting the figure alla prima, as well as working one-on-one with students as they are encouraged to push their considerations of composition and finish.
This workshop is the perfect follow up to Drawing the Figure From Life, as it builds upon the structural knowledge of the human form achieved in that course. This will allow students to better grasp fundamental concepts as depth of field and edge.