Drawing the Portrait in the Russian Style – Iliya Mirochnik

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.

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.