This five-week course is designed to help build strong foundational skills in portrait drawing. Students will focus on understanding facial proportions, controlling form, and developing accurate structure using sketching pencils. Each lesson strengthens observation, line work, and shading to help students confidently construct realistic portraits step-by-step.

Once students gain control and confidence in forming facial features, the course will introduce pastel techniques. They will learn how to add depth, soft transitions, and expressive colour through blending and layering, enhancing the portraits they have already built in pencil.

By the end of the program, participants will have completed a series of portrait studies and developed the essential skills needed to advance to more detailed and refined portrait work in future courses. No prior experience is required, just curiosity and enthusiasm for learning portrait art.

Please Note: Classes take place in unit 2E of the Picton Armoury (Main Street level). The most convenient access is through the Main Street entrance, but you can also enter through the back/Mary St. entrance and use the interior stairs to reach the main floor (please note there is no elevator in the Armoury). There is one accessible parking spot at the corner of Main and Ross streets across from The Regent Theatre.

Art supply fee - Please note that the cost of supplies is not included in the course fee; this amount depends on the course, and will be automatically added to your total. If this cost is prohibitive for you, please contact Sarah at [email protected] before registering to make alternative arrangements.

Offline registration - We prefer to take payment and registration through this form, but if you are not comfortable with this option and it is more than 2 weeks before the course begins, please check the "Offline" box in the Billing Information section below. We will contact you with alternative payment options. Payment must be received at least one week before the course begins.  

Processing fee - This covers transaction and ticketing fees. We've decided to use Regfox, the most affordable ticketing platform we could find, which will collectively save our participants over $1000 in processing fees per year.

Policies and Waivers - We've included these as part of the registration process (thank you for your patience!) to save some paperwork on your end and get straight to creating when we are in person!