Russian Drawing Course Part 33: The Portrait with Hands

[New Masters Academy]

In this lesson, Iliya takes the classical portrait one step further with the inclusion of one of the most emotive parts of the body: The hands.

Students are encouraged to work from the NMA reference images.

Join Ukrainian-born artist Iliya Mirochnik as he passes on a 250-year-old academic method preserved at the Repin Academy in Saint Petersburg, Russia and seldom taught outside of the Academy and never before on camera.

The Russian Academic drawing and painting approaches were uninterrupted by the modern art movements that transformed representational art in the West, and as a result, they provide a unique and clear lineage to the greater art traditions of the past. As a powerful approach that is both constructive and depictive, it combines the two methods that prevail in contemporary representational art.

In this series of drawing courses, we have set out to condense the entire program, spanning over eight years into a logical, step-by-step procedure. We have made improvements and added resources and exercises to explicitly drive home the concepts that are required to work in this approach.

We have also structured the course so that it is not only useful for professional and experienced artists but also artists with no drawing experience whatsoever.

In the last part of our Russian Academic Drawing Course, Iliya taught us the anatomical structures of the head & neck. In this next part, Drawing The Portrait in the Russian Style, we take everything we’ve learned, and use it to take on one of the more popular challenges of the Russian Academic Method: The Portrait.

we Follow along with Iliya Mirochnick as he uses this analytical approach to not only analyze and model the structures of the face, but to translate the character of a living model.

The New Masters Academy Coaching Program directly supports this Course. If you enroll in the coaching program, you can request an artist trained in the Russian Academic Method including Iliya Mirochnik himself. Click here to enroll in the Coaching Program.

Materials

• Graphite pencils
• Kneaded and Hard Erasers
• Roll of Paper, Smooth Sketchbook paper
• Easel
• Light source

* Reference material is only available for premium subscriptions. If you don’t have premium access to the reference, you can pause the video when the reference is shown.

[Joshua Simonds]

The addition of the music was a really poor choice in my opinion. Imagine a professor loudly playing on a radio whatever genre of music you least appreciate while giving a lecture. That’s what it will be like for a decent proportion of your audience, a pointless and distracting aggravation. I found it hard to continue watching. Earlier lessons didn’t have this issue. Gonna struggle through this and hope it isn’t also in the multi-figure lesson.

[Richard Steinberger]

The materials list is completely inadequate. Please provide a specific list of brands and hardnesses for charcoal and graphite, as well as sharpening methods. Also paper and paper mounting methods. As an instructor, your complete overlooking of communicating the details of materials is a shock and undermines anything that comes after. Best of luck.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Richard Steinberger.

[Joshua Jacobo]

Richard, the materials are in the fundamentals portion which you can find here:

https://www.nma.art/videolessons/russian-drawing-course-part-1-materials-set-up/?course=552945

I will see if we can make this clearer so nobody misses it.

Joshua, thanks for your feedback. We’ve heard  positive feedback from students since we started adding music to our courses a year ago.

I have an idea of having multiple audio tracks (one without music) and a button on the player that switches but we are looking into its feasibility now.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Joshua Jacobo.

[Jenifer Andrea Arana Herrera]

[Jenifer Andrea Arana Herrera]

Soy nueva apenas voy entendiendo todas las herramientas de este sitio. Me parecio excelente la explicación, aunque yo buscó siempre trabajar con rapidez este vídeo me ha resultado muy instructivo. 😁 Saludos desde México.

[Kailene Falls]

The size of the panel seems to be different than the 18×24 panel discussed in the original materials set up video. Any idea how big a panel/paper we should be using?

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Kailene, The exact dimensions of the back board used  are 24″ x 30″ (male – Mark) and 36″ x2 4″ (female) . but we recommend 18×24 since this is more easily obtainable especially if you are not stretching your paper.

[Author]

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