LOST AND FOUND

A charcoal self-portrait workshop

You sit down across from a mirror. Sixty minutes later you're holding a face — yours — pulled out of grey paper with a stick of burnt wood. Most people don't believe they can do it until it's done.

Lost and Found is a beginner's charcoal portrait class, and the name is the lesson. You learn to lose the shadow side of the face into a dark ground, and find the lit side with a few strokes of white. That's the whole magic of a portrait — the edges that disappear and the ones that don't. You'll learn it the way the old masters did: block in the structure first, then let light carve the face out of the dark.

No experience required. None. If you've told yourself you can't draw, this is the room where that stops being true. We work on toned grey paper, which does half the work for you — the paper is the shadow, the charcoal is the dark, the white is the light. You build a face the way it actually appears: out of contrast, not outline.

Everything is provided. Charcoal, paper, mirror, the white that makes it sing — you bring nothing but your face and an hour. Sessions run about sixty minutes, in good light, in good company. You leave with a finished portrait, fixed and ready to carry home.

Come find out what your face looks like when you actually look at it.

Sessions run at venues across Brooklyn. Reserve a spot, or join the list to hear when the next one lands near you.