Artist Draws Attention to Portrait Painting

One of the foremost challenges for the portrait artist is to impart a dynamic aspect to the subject, making the work seem to come to life.

Budding artists learned techniques to bring life and vitality to their portraiture during a class called “Drawing from the Old Masters: The Lively Portrait" presented Wednesday at the Getty Center.

Artist Peter Zokosky demonstrated how a portrait or drawing can be influenced by things such as contrast, composition, line and shape.

“All good art does have a lively quality to it, but if you find your work to be a little boring, go back and look at the shapes and see if you’ve focused enough on shapes and symmetry,” Zokosky told the class.

Zokosky has served as a professor of painting and drawing at the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and Cal State Long Beach. He has worked with the Getty for at least a decade, according to Cathy Carpenter, education specialist with artist-based programs for the Getty.

“Today I would like the students to walk away with the ability to understand those components that can contribute to creating a more active and lively representation of portraiture,” Carpenter said. “There are a variety of different tools that Peter will be highlighting, so it’s giving them some ways to approach portraiture that they may not have thought about on their own.”

The students started out with a simple warm-up exercise that involved isolating one of five characters from the Getty painting “Musicians Brawling” by G. de la Tour and sketching that person. They were encouraged to experiment with things like composition.

“We all have our automatic fall-back composition where we put the head in the middle and go from there, so try to get away from that,” Zokosky urged the class.

After that exercise, Zokosky took the students upstairs to the gallery where he was able to point out different techniques that contribute to a portrait’s liveliness using paintings from the Getty collection as examples.

“One of the great things about art class at the Getty is that you can go look at the actual paintings, and not just look at slides or reproductions,” Zokosky said.

After doing some sketching in the gallery, the students were ready to return to the studio where they put the new techniques they had learned to use while drawing a live model.

The portraiture class will be repeated from 1-4 p.m. on Aug. 10. The cost is $35. For information, or to make a reservation, call 310-440-7300 or visit www.getty.edu.