Daniel Shadbolt - heads

Lying Down Head Portrait

This project was focused on painting head closeups, led by Daniel Shadbolt. Daniel was the winner of the Bulldog Bursary in 2008 and you can see examples of his work at www.danielshadbolt.com. His style of work and teaching approach is to focus on a searching, objective examination of the subject, with small and sometimes thin marks gradually building towards an image. The process of the search is up front in the work. To me his work brings to mind Cezanne, which is a great compliment.

I struggled in this project feeling less at ease with the style of approach than some others. On the other hand I can comfortably say it was a good learning experience, giving me a taste of an approach that is very different from my usual one. Others in the class thrived on it. In fact one of the works from this project, done by Mark Stevenson, was selected in open competition for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition.

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