Portrait Drawing: From Sketches to Sustained Studies

Explore and learn to draw the forms and structures of the human head, facial features, and body dynamics and discover the connection between the ‘character’ and the ‘face’. Using a variety of drawing mediums from pencil, charcoal, ink and wash to collage, via quick sketches and sustained drawings, students will investigate a range of subjects starting with the skull and plaster casts, to the live model and self-portrait.

Noel Thurgate challenges you to find out “What holds the key to a likeness?” He references historical and contemporary portraits to provide insight into artists’ approach their portrait subjects, their methodologies, and use of materials. He welcomes entry level students and caters to more experienced students to enable experimentation with new materials and techniques.  Noel provides the scope to explore compositional possibilities that the sitter/model and surroundings may present, during the sustained and in-depth studies.

* NAS Short Courses are open to students of ages 16 years and over. The NAS Art Club is open to students from ages 15 years and over. 

* Drawing and painting short courses may be held in upstairs studios. If access to stairs is not suitable, please contact us at short.courses@nas.edu.au 

* What to bring? Please refer to the list of required materials in the Art Materials field below. 

Students must supply their own art materials, please refer to the list below:

• 1 x 4B and 1 x 6B graphite pencils
• 4 x sticks willow charcoal 10mm
• 2 x sticks compressed charcoal
• 1 x medium and soft charcoal pencil
• 1 x sepia or sanguine Conte pencil
• 1 x white Conte pencil
• Block rubber
• Soft cloth
• 1 x Aquarelle graphite pencil
• 1 x Aquarelle black pencil
• 3 x sheets good quality drawing paper e.g. Stonehenge 150 gsm A2 size or bigger
• 10 x sheets of A2 cartridge paper
• 1 x sheet of A2 Canson paper mid tone grey

Enclosed footwear is essential in all studios on campus.

Evan Salmon is an artist who works in the mediums of painting, drawing and printmaking and is known for his landscape paintings, portraits and still life. He has exhibited extensively in Australia for over thirty years, including at Watters Gallery. Across his career he has held 28 solo exhibitions and been included in numerous group exhibitions. His portraits have been selected for the Salon des Refuses at the S.H. Ervin Gallery 11 times between 2012 and 2024. Evan was highly commended in the 2024 Kedumba Drawing Award. He was awarded the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize in 2015 and was a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2006.

Evan’s work is held in the collections of the National Art School, National Gallery of Australia, NSW State Parliament, State Library of New South Wales, Artbank, University of Technology Sydney, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, University of Wollongong Art Collection, University of Wollongong in Dubai, Wollongong Art Gallery and private collections both in Australia and overseas.

He received a Diploma from the National Art School in 1991 and completed a Master of Fine Art (Research) at the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW in 2002. Evan has been a Lecturer in Drawing at the National Art School since 2017 and previously taught painting and drawing to Diploma students at various TAFE colleges between 2002 and 2016.