Doing art Freud's way

With the death of Lucian Freud last week, realist art and the painting of portraits lost a very great exponent.

The skill required to render a good likeness is admirable but the ability to see and then convey complex psychological counterpoints in a subject is a mysterious art that inspires awe.

What happens to the tradition now, I wondered. It immediately became clear that far from being sidelined by the contemporary art scene, realist work is alive and kicking. The number of new schools of realist painting opening across the US, China, Russia and now London in recent years shows that this form of art is going through something of a Renaissance.

London has long boasted hundreds of drawing clubs and evening classes but it's the classical, rigorous Atelier tradition, handed down through centuries by old masters from Rembrandt and Titian through to John Singer Sargent, that has recently taken hold in London and across the US and is attracting a surprising number of talented and ambitious students.

"We opened this school five years ago but this is the first year that our school has gone into profit," says Scott Pohlschmidt, of the Lavender Hill Studios, one of four new atelier schools in London. Nick Bashall, a respected portrait painter and inspirational co-founder, was recently invited to demonstrate the realist atelier techniques in a tent at Glastonbury.

I spent time in his blacked-out workshop in Battersea to see what students were learning: first how to stand, hold the charcoal, how to draw a straight line from the shoulder and why. Then, using boxes of various size and shape, the sight-sizing method of measuring - establishing proportion by eye rather than a measuring stick - which takes many months to master. Then using classical plaster casts under focused spotlight, how to render mass, shadow-shapes and subtle colour-values. Chamois leather cloths were used to unceremoniously wipe the paper clean and start again, charcoal dust was everywhere, and a good slug of Rioja helped raise dejected spirits at half-time.

Students then graduated to using oil paint administered with large brushes for the 20-minute still life of bottles, jugs, fruit and vegetables, on canvas board. They learnt about the pigments in oil paints - and which colours are naturally more translucent or opaque. They learnt that when using wet oils you have to paint from dark to light because once white pigment is applied, its density is such that dark pigments won't "take" when laid wet over the top. Eventually the students tackle painting from life with models, both naked and dressed, as Freud did throughout his long career.

This all requires real discipline, a thing that is easy and tempting to rebel against, and students often do. "But once you've got the principles, which are very logical and precise, it's all about time in the saddle," says Bashall with a grin.

As with Picasso and other innovators who grew up in the atelier tradition, once you've got the hang of it (as he did aged roughly 14) you can do absolutely anything with it. There is something weighty about the atelier style - the opposite of kitsch or pop, it's rarely jokey, in fact it's rather better at conveying gravitas. Perhaps the rise of this sober skill is a sign of our times.

The oldest and perhaps gentlest of the London atelier schools is Heatherley's, alma mater to many fine British portrait painters since 1845.