This is it! The start of the new Bootcamp Challenge era... and it's here a month early.
Goal
Make the right call the first time. Build edge variety from the first marks so the drawing grows with clarity and efficiency.
Time
Plan for 2ā3 hours.
Challenge 2025-09-19 08:41:20 +0000 UTC View Post
"Forza e coraggio" is what Pietro Annigoni used to say to Daniel Graves as Daniel was leaving his studio after a critique. Whether it was meant as an idle farewell or as something more deeply felt is hard to sayābut Iāve always taken it as the latter.
A former student wrote to me recently, at the beginning of her career and searching f...
2025-09-07 23:49:49 +0000 UTC View PostThis final video brings the skull project to a close. Itās a quick walkthrough of the last refinementsāchecking symmetry, sharpening planes, and pulling the whole form together. Nothing new here, just a way to see the piece resolved and to remind you how the process looks when it all comes together.
Now that the skull is finished, we c...
2025-09-01 06:50:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Starting in October, Block-In Bootcamp will run as a monthly challenge. Hereās how it works:
Step 1: A New Project Each Month
At the beginning of the month, youāll get access to a new 90-minute drawing video and source image. Iāll walk you through a complete block-in project from start to finish.
The question of subject matter can feel overwhelming because the world is filled to the brim with suggestive input (cue video clip of social-media-feed-doom-scroll). Everywhere there is something that could be drawn- but the truth is that not all of it matters equally to you. The key is to notice what actually stops youāwhat makes you look lon...
2025-08-19 15:31:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Group critique: https://youtu.be/MUDcWw5prPg
This month we will be following up on last monthās John Singer Sargent portrait drawing study with a second attempt. Crucially this one will included a dark background that lends more depth and realism when compared to the mo...
2025-08-17 08:10:35 +0000 UTC View Post
What can I say about this guy? He's fun, he's funny, he's a wicked good artist.
Any chance I get to chat with him it's worth a go- Michael and I gave his portrait our best shot.
Hope you enjoy š¤
2025-08-08 12:21:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Developing a drawing in this style has to mean that we expand the possible outcomes instead of narrowing them down. After all, creativity thrives on options.
In this lesson, we're going to put down the source image, look away from the model, and at least in part- work from emotion. Just to be clear, that means our fundamentals and measurem...
2025-08-01 20:14:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Group critique: https://youtu.be/TG3NwWDr2t8
Lesson goes LIVE: Saturday July 12th @4pm Oslo time
For years, I resisted studying John Singer Sergeant's charcoal drawings. In an atelier environment dominated by precision and drawing at a snails pace, they seemed frivo...
2025-07-08 15:34:52 +0000 UTC View Post
This August, Iām teaching a three-day drawing workshop in an unexpected location: a studio literally just steps from the Roman Forum. The Colosseum is literally down the street. If you throw a pencil hard enough (please donāt), it will land in a pile of ruins.
What to Expect:
Weāll be working on composition, struc...
Here is a concept that is hard to understand: preparing rigorously for a performance is not done in a effort to control all the variables completely or to ensure success.
We do it so that when the time comes to improvise and take chances we never loose sight of our north star.
In this lesson, we're going to start out as we need to ...
2025-07-01 07:51:11 +0000 UTC View Post
What can I say? Steve Forster is literally my best friend in the world. He is a brilliant painter and has been for ages. However, even more than that I value the diversity of his experience in his education and growth as an artist, I value this more: he hasn't done anything the easy way.
Its a great convo with a cool guy and I think that ...
2025-06-24 15:03:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Group critique: https://youtu.be/FFgmut0VKlo
This sounds crazy, but hear me outā¦ style is not the cherry on top of the cake, it's the seed that a drawing grows from.
With that in mind this month's lesson is about the block in style that I think dovetails best if t...
2025-06-20 09:45:35 +0000 UTC View Post
So, Heavy Metal Portrait Drawing in Rome wrapped up last week and it was wicked/rad š¤
Something very important occurred to me while teaching this course and that will be this month studio log entry:
Risk positivity is essential for sustaining a long-term, meaningful art practiceānot because risk guarantees success, but because ...
Let's be crystal clear about this from the start, creativity is hard to pull off.
I don't mean that you're innate self or vision are somehow a problem to be solved, or that we need to fit ourselves into some very uncomfortable shape in order to truly be creative.
I mean, explicitly that expressing your vision, taking the picture you ...
2025-06-01 07:40:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Great convo with a good friend and a solid Draftsman. It's got all the things that you would want and expect, even a decent explanation about the variety of styles of painting and drawing that emerge from Russian academies.
Oh, I almost forgot- this is the first episode in which I am painting instead of drawing!
I'm using titanium wh...
2025-05-28 09:16:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Group Critique: https://youtu.be/dPeePuHiuU8
Behind any solid improvisation, thereās always some kind of structure holding it upāsomething that makes sure that the performance doesn't run off the rails.
In the last lesson, we blocked in values with that in mind:...
2025-05-08 08:42:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Eudald has been a source of inspiration for me since around 2011.
When I draw, I enjoy building formābut I also like breaking it apart. It might sound strange, but thereās something powerful about letting chaos into the process. It creates a situation I have to react to, one that wouldnāt have come up if Iād stayed in control the w...
2025-05-04 09:32:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Is it possible to get away with a well-drawn portrait that has a badly drawn ear? Sureāsometimes. But why would you want to?
The ear is one of the most complex and interesting forms in the head. Its shapes are specific, sculptural, and often surprisingly beautiful. Learning a bit about its structure will go a long way toward drawing it m...
2025-04-30 23:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
A feeling and an experience are not the same; your drawingās progress and your emotional response to it expose this split. Feelings, while rich and immediate, often veil clear judgment, and when they dominate, they can blur your ability to perceive your actual work. On the other hand, experienceāthe slow accumulation of decisions, revisions,...
2025-04-28 08:46:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Group Critique: https://youtu.be/q5p1gZSNQEg
Each layer of a painting is like a block in. It introduces a new kind of information, ideally in the simplest way possible.
Following on from last month's Boot Camp, we're going to add to our monochromatic underpainting a...
2025-04-19 09:14:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Iāve known Mario for what feels like forever, and in all that time, he has remained one of the kindest, most thoughtful people Iāve encountered in the art world. In an industry that can often be competitive or ego-driven, Mario brings a rare combination of humility, insight, and unwavering generosity. Long before I ever picked up a pencil wi...
2025-04-16 13:39:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Seeing values and documenting them correctly in your painting is a technique. There are concrete steps to follow that lead to a good result. Does it have to be practised? For sure. But so does riding a bike, hitting a baseball, or swimming. You've probably gotten good at one or all of those things in your life so far, so you probably shouldn't c...
2025-04-08 08:32:09 +0000 UTC View Post
In drawing and painting a sphere represents a perfect laboratory environment in which to explore the possibilities of style, materials, concepts, really anything that you need to work out in a practical sense as a visual artist.
In this lesson, we are drawing a sphere with the intent of determining exactly how far and how much we need to c...
2025-03-31 23:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a really special episode of the podcast. I've known Daniela Astone or about 15 years. In that time she has always represented to me the true spirit of creativity and painting. Though she studied and taught for a long time, her artistic expression has always seemed to me that kind of force of nature.
This conversation covers so many...
2025-03-28 11:10:22 +0000 UTC View Post
You know, I've made hundreds of videos for YouTube and Patreon over the years. I'm not really shy about being in front of the camera, never have been.
This video on the other hand, makes me feel rather exposed. I don't think it's because of the content itself, rather that it's me really trying to tell a story. Admittedly it's just telling ...
2025-03-22 10:09:39 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a categorical list of the previous block and Boot Camp sessions. Please enjoy perusing, watching, and working along with them š«
This archive will always be here, and will grow overtime, while the primary lessons on Patreon will be optimised for linear practice and accessibility.
Since these videos will be streamed through ...
2025-03-17 08:34:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Sean is genuinely one of the coolest guys I know. Can he make chess pieces using a metal lathe? Of course. Is he a full-time professional artist who also spends time in his home foundry making giant knives, definitely. Does he have one of the best cranial structures in the entire western art scene? Obviously.
In this episode, Sean, Michael...
2025-03-16 15:47:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Lesson goes LIVE: March 15th at 5pm Oslo time š«
In the session we're gonna go through a categorical step-by-step monochromatic underpainting. As I see it this is the perfect way to start a Portrait if you need to generate a positive outcome. By that I mean if it's a commission, if it matters that you get the likeness spot on, if it need...
2025-03-12 13:03:20 +0000 UTC View Post
2,500 high resolution source images of various women in different lighting conditions. This pack was designed especially with the portrait artist in mind. This pack is TOTALLY FREE TO ALL SUBSCRIBING PATRONS ā¤ļøā?
2025-03-08 15:30:08 +0000 UTC View Post