Indholdsfortegnelse for Paint & Draw: Portraits i Paint & Draw: Portraits

It’s often said that the eyes are the window to the soul - so how you depict them can make or break your portraits. In this brand-new book, find out how to re-create the human face, from accurately depicting skin tone and complexions to how to add soul and personality to your portraits. Over the following pages, our experts will share their secrets for achieving realism in your faces, from how to capture emotions from surprise to anger, to exploring how to realistically illustrate different types of hair. Elsewhere, explore our step-by-step projects to capturing people in various mediums.…

In this portrait in oils tutorial, I want to open the door for you to start mindfully introducing arbitrary colours and exciting gestures with a variety of tools. A basic understanding of the colour wheel and complementary colours would be useful, so you may need to do a quick bit of research to get a thorough overview. I love creating challenging colour combinations, varied surface qualities and large tonal shifts. The more freewheeling and distant from the original source (whilst not losing the connection), the more enjoyable I find it. Before I begin almost every painting, I plan the colour scheme for all major elements in my head or on paper. Then I adapt it as the painting moves on. It is worth noting that some pigments react with one…

Being synthetic, acrylics can tend towards a somewhat plastic texture and feeling – especially if you attempt to emulate oil paint by applying the pigment thickly. Things can quickly become glue-like and frustrating! I work around this by treating the acrylic as the water-based medium it is, building up many thin layers of subtle colours. It requires patience, but the results can be gorgeous, and you can achieve much more lively and compelling skin tones. The key to this technique is to keep the pigment very thin on the brush – barely there at all. I mix the paint very thinly as well, and often wipe everything from the brush. A wet palette is vital when mixing, but even though this is a wet effect, I call it “dusting”, because…

Materials Although I have collected many more colours than I list here (what artist can resist?), these are the colours I rely on time and again for my portraits: ◻ Stabilo Carb-Othello pastel pencils in earthy reds, browns, greys and black◻ Nupastels in sandalwood (204), cherry red (213), olive green (248), blue (265), deep terra cotta (273), Van Dyke brown (293), garnet (353), salmon (383)◻ Rembrandt soft pastels in Permanent Red Light #3, Gold Ochre #3, and all values of burnt & raw umbers, blue-grey, grey-green, Mars violet & Caput Mortuum◻ Winsor-Newton pastels in Davy’s grey, tint 3◻ Sennelier pastels in medium & light blue-violet (334, 335); dark red (045); deep brown (156)◻ Assorted paper stompes & tissues; kneaded eraser; soft graphite pencil; banker’s clips; Red Devil metal wood sander…

The head is an important part of the body, as we love to look at faces and will usually look at the head first when viewing a drawing. Because of this familiarity, coupled with the complexity of the features of the face, we are ruthless judges of portraits and will notice even the smallest of mistakes. The posture of the head is also important when drawing the figure because it adds interest to the pose, as well as indicating intent, especially in more dynamic poses. There are a lot of potential tripping points, with proportion being a common complaint. I always recommend lightly roughing out where you want to place the features before delving into the details, so you can double check your proportions early on. In particular, eyes have…

Dutch post-impressionist Vincent Willem van Gogh created many self-portraits in his career, and some of them are not so obvious. For example, Irises, painted at the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the last year before his death, is a perfect example. A white flower stands alone and defiant in this very moving painting. The self-portrait can take many guises and gives the artist the opportunity to say something about who they are, what they are, and importantly, what and who they want to be. In this workshop we’re going to go through the stages of developing a self-portrait from start to finish and also try and give it a hint of the great master, Vincent van Gogh. Materials Rob has used the following colours because they offer “a good…

Materials ◻ Colourfix Pastel Primer in Raw Sienna◻ Red conté crayon◻ Unison pastels Soft pastels are a lovely medium for capturing the energy of a moving figure. This little boy digging in the sand is changing his position constantly, and if you were watching him you wouldn’t see much detail at all. However, you would feel the heat of the Sun, and the wind in your hair, which are all part of the moment’s energy. In this sort of scene, I vary my pastel marks by defining edges in places, but smudging and softening in others. With a basic knowledge of anatomy, the pose can be conveyed with a few lines, and then built up with marks made by twisting the pastels on their edges. By making quick marks, and…

1 Mid-tone skin First I need to determine the mid skin tone of my subject. This can be tricky to determine if there’s a lot of different lighting in your subject, so you may need to approach strong light sources separately. Try squinting at the subject. This reduces the range of tones you can see and simplifies your subject’s tonal range. I mixed Scarlet Lake and Ultramarine Blue to produce my warm violet and then reduced its saturation by adding increasing amounts of Yellow Lake to get my warm light brown. I then cooled and lightened the brown by adding Titanium White No.1. 2 Light skin tone Try using a tonal scale to accurately judge whether you’re reaching the desired tone. You can make these yourself by adding white to one end…

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, born 1571 in Lombardy, Italy, was the world’s first rockstar painter. Spending a lot of his career on the run with a price on his head (he killed a gangster in a duel over a girl), the rebellious young painter turned the art world of 17th-century Europe upside down. He revolutionised the levels of realism in art with his high-impact chiaroscuro technique of dramatic light and dark. He also challenged patrons by painting common people off the street as the stars of his masterpieces. It’s hard for audiences today to appreciate just how shocking his paintings were in their day, with that shock and awe spilling out into his private life, too. Caravaggio’s favourite phrase was ‘nec spe, nec metu’, which translates as ‘without hope, without…

Therapeutic imagery – visuals that can be used as a psychotherapeutic support vehicle in healing the soul – has always held a deep fascination for me. The capturing of complex human emotions such as dismay intrigues me, and this inspires me to illustrate the classic damsel in distress. Now that I’ve decided on the subject, I want to create an interpretation of a damsel in distress that’s different from how she’s been traditionally depicted in the past. When I find myself in a tight spot, my mind will usually react chaotically. It’s as if I’m submerged in a frenzy of emotions, each tearing my psyche in opposite directions. BILLOWING DRESS To convey this complex idea, the damsel’s woe is represented through the billowing of her dress, as if she’s been…

Materials ◻ 1/2 sheet Arches 140lb paper, NOT (CP)◻ Winsor & Newton colourless masking fluid◻ Mixing palette◻ Winsor & Newton Artist quality paints; Aureolin/Permanent Rose/Cerulean Blue/Cobalt Blue/French Ultramarine/Cadmium Red◻ Brush; Large Mop/Sable Round Size 14/Pointed Round Size 8/Rigger Size 3/Large & small flat In this guide you will learn how to paint portraits in watercolour – full of colour, with an impressionistic feel that really makes your work stand out. The focus of this tutorial is the face, showing you how to portray feelings and emotions in your subject. Pay particular attention to the eyes, because they capture emotion, holding the story behind them. Practising this technique will teach you how to paint instinctively. You can become comfortable painting with expressive colours that enhance the subject. Learn how to use…

One of the areas that beginner artists struggle with in regards to human anatomy is noses. Perhaps it is the diversity of shapes that we see every day that makes it harder to understand their anatomy. In this short piece, I will give some tips on what to pay attention to when painting a nose. It’s easy enough to assume that we know how a nose looks – and therefore how we should depict it in art – but in reality, the nose can be a complex feature to accurately re-create. To truly understand how the nose is formed, it’s wise to break it down into its basic shapes and to flesh it out from there. Consider how the nose looks in the context of the rest of the face,…

“Creating an emotive portrait is more than just accurately depicting the anatomy of the eye, however – it’s capturing the expression of a face here that will really ground your portraits in reality” Eyes are the most important element of any successful portrait. To help you get them right, I will explain what to do in order to achieve a realistic effect. I’ll teach you about the importance of judging values and observing the anatomy of the eyes so that your portraits can come alive. For many, the eyes are considered the window to the soul – so to truly capture the essence of a person in your portraits, it’s absolutely vital to get the eyes right. Creating an emotive portrait is more than just accurately depicting the anatomy of…