Draw & Paint Your Own Portrait

The portrait has been the greatest challenge and the greatest achievement in art for centuries. In this class, you’ll take it on — and you’ll succeed. Working from a mirror or photo reference, Igor Naskalov guides you through facial proportions, feature placement, and the use of light and shadow that makes a portrait come alive.

You begin with a pencil drawing to establish structure, then paint over it with acrylic or oil-based pastel. No prior experience required.

What you’ll learn

• Facial proportions: the rules artists have used for 500 years
• Sketching a face with correct feature placement
• Using light and shadow to give the face volume
• Painting skin tones in acrylic or oil pastel

What to bring

• HB and B pencils, eraser
• Drawing paper A3/A4
• Acrylic paint set OR oil-based pastel set (your choice)
• Canvas board or primed cardboard A3/A4
• Soft synthetic brushes #0–8 (if using acrylics)
• Small mirror or a photo reference

Class size: 8–12 students (minimum 5 to run) · Ages: 12+ · Languages: English · Russian · Italian

Who is Igor Naskalov?

Igor Naskalov is a classically trained Russian painter and one of the foremost instructors of Old Masters techniques working today. He currently serves as Chairman of Painting at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow – the same institution that has trained generations of Russia’s finest artists – where he also leads student programs at the State Hermitage Museum.

Igor’s teaching takes him across the world. He has led workshops and masterclasses at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy and the Dutch Atelier of Realist Art in Haarlem, Netherlands, working with serious students of painting from Europe, Russia, and the United States. This summer, he completed a program at the Hermitage Museum with 22 students before bringing his work to South Florida.

He is the co-author of Drawing Drapery, an academic instructional book on the history and classical technique of depicting textiles — a staple subject in the European painting tradition.

Igor teaches in English, Russian, and Italian, and his classes are designed to give students of all levels a genuine experience of how the great painters of Europe actually worked — not a simplified version of it, but the real thing, adapted to where you are right now as an artist.