Bold PORTRAITS

German Expressionism was an early 20th-century art movement characterised by bold colours and marks. Taking inspiration from Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh, Expressionist artists such as Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Alexej von Jawlensky are good examples of portrait painters working in Germany at that time. Often much cruder in style and bolder in application, these painters developed an almost reckless attitude toward portraiture where colour was used for emotional impact, using vivid notation.

For this masterclass, I wanted to try and emulate some of the portrait techniques of these artists. I wanted to use colour with a very non-realist emphasis as they did to see just how far it could be pushed in that respect. I worked from life and then developed the image as I went, using colour as