8 weeks (2 classes per week, 4 hours per class, Total: 64 hours) Minimum: 4 students
🗓 Workshop Days: Monday & Thursday
⏰ Schedule: 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Figurative painting continues to play a central role in contemporary art, not only as a form of representation but also as a means of challenging conventions, exploring new narratives, developing creativity, and building a personal visual language.
This course is designed for students with or without prior academic painting experience who wish to develop their own artistic vision in a contemporary context. We will help students deepen their understanding of figurative painting through experimentation and the development of contemporary techniques, using media such as oil, acrylic, and pastel.
Artistic practice will be approached as a process of personal research and reflection, encouraging students to question the limits of representation and build a more personal and creative body of work.
✔️ Encourage experimentation as a tool for exploring new possibilities in figurative painting.
✔️ Take students' technical skills beyond conventional academic representation.
✔️ Help students develop their own visual identity based on personal interests and references.
✔️ Provide tools to approach composition, color, and atmosphere in a contemporary way.
✔️ Create a space for discussion and critical analysis to contextualize students’ work within contemporary art.
✔️ Stimulate creativity and the development of personal painting projects.
✔️ Study and analyze the works of international contemporary figurative painters.
Theoretical Lectures: Presentation and analysis of historical and contemporary references.
Practical Exercises: Hands-on sessions in oil, acrylic, or pastel (based on student preference), aimed at deconstructing the academic approach and fostering a more personal, experimental, and creative vision.
Group Discussions & Critiques: Review and evaluation of student work.
Individual Guided Work: Development of a personal project throughout the course.
✔️ Oil, acrylic, or pastel paints (based on student preference).
✔️ Prepared canvases or panels.
✔️ Sketch paper.
✔️ Brushes of various sizes and shapes, palette knives, and other tools.
✔️ Mediums and solvents (as per student choice).
Portales is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Miami. He graduated from the Academia Profesional de Artes Visuales Tiburcio Lorenzo in Pinar del Río, Cuba, and earned his BFA in Visual Arts from ISA from 2013 to 2018. Portales has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions worldwide, spanning the United States, Spain,
Portales is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Miami. He graduated from the Academia Profesional de Artes Visuales Tiburcio Lorenzo in Pinar del Río, Cuba, and earned his BFA in Visual Arts from ISA from 2013 to 2018. Portales has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions worldwide, spanning the United States, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Cuba. He is in the permanent collection of Jorge Pérez’s El Espacio 23 (Miami, FL). Artist residences include Fountainhead Residency (Miami, FL), Illy & UNIDEE with Cittadellarte Fundazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy), and Art OMI at OMI International Art Center (Columbia, NY).