Portrait Painting with Victoria Kalaichi & Dennis Sarazhin

This five-day workshop will take a deep dive into tonal values — what they are, why they shift, and understanding how tone is essential for working with color and creating harmony in the overall painting.

Working from a live clothed model, Victoria and Denis will show students how to analyze key anatomical points of the head and neck to paint a classical portrait in the Ukrainian Academic method. Victoria will show students how to understand and build large head shapes and then move on to adding color and detail to build form, space, and life. The Ukrainian school of realism is famous for vivacious but well-balanced color. Students will be painting from a different model each day using a variety of natural poses. Anatomy is a particular passion of Victoria and Denis, and both artists emphasize sturdy structure upon which rich color is layered.