A new short demo
Last week I showed you how to start a portrait in oil. This week I finished the portrait and I made a short demonstration video. Have fun!
Learn how to start a portrait in oil.
Learn how to start a portrait in oil.
In this video demonstration I show how to start a portrait in oil paint, this time from observation, and based on photography.
I use high quality oil prepared canvas. In advance I applied two extra layers of oil painting primer. I made it off-white, adding a small amount of oil paint: ivory black and yellow ochre. Now, after two days, the surface is perfectly dry. For sketching I use charcoal because it is easy to erase. I love that material!
I start by drawing the vertical center line of the face which is a slightly inclined. Measuring with the compass, from the top to the chin I transfer the maximum length of the face. And from the bottom upward, I find the marker points of the lips, the nose, the eyes and the hairline. I make a horizontal centre line that intersects the center of the eyes, and mark the width of the face and the ears. After drawing the contours I complete the drawing with the features. I take the mirror and I see the drawing and the photograph at the same time. Mirrored I can judge more easy the entire proportion and the separate details. Try it yourself and you will never work without a mirror anymore!
When I am satisfied I make the underpainting in oils: raw umber. If the charcoal bothers me, I sweep it away with my finger. I did not fix the drawing, but of course you can do if you think it necessary. In the beginning I don´t use any medium. Later I block in the large areas with a bigger brush and I dilute the paint with citrus turpentine. And during the entire progress I keep checking the proportions.
After one or two days the underpainting is dry enough to start the real oil painting.
Visiting our friends Saad Ali & Monique Bastiaans
Visiting our friends.
This weekend we paid a visit to our artists friends Saad Ali and Monique Bastiaans who live near Valencia. We shared our friendship and talked about art till words came out our ears. Monique explained the finishing touches of her exhibition later this month in Valencia, and Saad showed his sketches for large fresco´s. Contagious and inspiring.
Click on the image to see her website.
Monique Bastiaans has lived in Spain since 1989 and is moving between different styles of three-dimensional work with the same ease as she is using varied materials. Not only does she produce monumental transparent installations and temporary interventions in the public domain, but also colourful objects of plastic, glass, stone and ceramics. All her work shows an inseparable link between form, colour and material.
Click on the image to see his website.
Saad Ali’s magical paintings find their origin in Arabic mythology and Iraqi cultural history. Through his education and long stay in Florence, Saad Ali became acquainted with the western style of traditional painting. From these rich sources he forms his own mythical world, in which faith in a joyful future is depicted. He was born in Iraq in1949 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and Perugia.
Pre-mixing flesh tones for portrait painting
Pre-mixing flesh tones for portrait painting
Starting a portrait I always prepare my palette carefully. In the picture you see the palette that I made for the video tutorial “Portrait of a little girl”.
People often have difficulties with mixing the flesh colours. And indeed in the beginning it is not so easy. In all my videos I spend a lot of attention to the explanation how I mix my colours. In this demonstration, the flesh tones are of a half-dark skin complexion.
Good books
Good books.
I painted this portrait ten years ago.
Long time ago I worked as a commercial illustrator. My agent was Art Box in Amsterdam. The owner became a good friend. I remember he lent us his car for two month when our daughter was born. “You need a car” was what he said. And indeed a car was most welcome at the time. That was in 1984. Once he gave me a book: “Rockwell on Rockwell”, subtitle “How I make a picture”.
Thinking it over, after all these years, this book made a fundamental change in my approach to how I was working until then. The manner Rockwell explained his “way” to a good painting, how he prepared his work, made me realize the importance of a controlled approach, and later I elaborated this way of working to my portrait painting. I am convinced that separating the main issues in portrait painting can help to overcome problems. Now I call it My Method, well regarded that is nonsense: of course it is not my own invention. I owe thanks to a lot of other art teachers, that I came across in books over the years. And last but not least I learned a lot of the Great Masters of painting like Velazquez, Rembrandt, Sorolla etc. But Rockwell opened my eyes.
Another book that was of fundamental value: Het Tekenen van de mens by Hatton & de Hey. I had to buy this book at the suggestion of Beatus Nijs, my drawing teacher when I was young. Still sometimes I consult this book.
The colours on my palette.
The colours on my palette.
This is the list of the colours that I have on my palette. I am very satisfied with Rembrandt of the dutch brand Talens. Good professional quality. And as I am dutch myself I am proud of this excellent product. The numbers on the list refer to the colour chart of Talens. See here the PDF of the Talens colour chart.
Some notes on the colours.
- White: I occasionally mix zinc and titanium white. It makes a soft, runny white.
- Lemon yellow: I don´t need it so often but it makes a marvelous combination with white and carmine. Good for the cheeks.
- Yellow ochre: One of my basics to make skin tones.
- Raw siena: Not always on my palette but sometimes useful in receding planes on the forehead. Also mixed with cerulean a nice combination for back-grounds
- Cadmium red light: Together with yellow ochre a basic for skin tones.
- Cadmium red deep: A cooler red, nice for blush on the cheeks.
- Cadmium orange: Mixing with viridian green makes a rich, deep shadow.
- Venetian red: Sometimes useful for the lips, mixed with white.
- Indian red: Also sometimes for the lips. And good for making flesh tones for a darker skin complexion.
- Burnt sienna: Useful for shadows with viridian green. With ultramarine makes it an almost black. With ivory black useful for black-brown hair.
- Burnt umber: Don´t mix this with the lights. Useful for deep accents, but almost pure from the tube.
- Carmine: Indispensable but take care: it is very high-keye. Mix with ultramarine and white for a mauve-colour. Useful to cool down fiery skin tones. With white: perfect highlight.
- Permanent yellow-green: A bright green colour. Useful for sun-tanned skin and sometimes in the face on the temple.
- Chromium oxide green: A solid green for making a rich brown shadow with cadmium red light.
- Viridian: Perfect dark colour to start making shadows.
- Cerulean blue: Appropriate for cooling down fiery flesh tones.
- Ultramarine: With burnt sienna a good black. With carmine and white makes a mauvish mixture.
- Ivory black. Nice to make neutral grey´s with white and yellow ochre. With burnt sienna for good deep darks in black hair. Never use black why you need black! I mean for instance in black cloths.
Brushes for oil painting
What brushes for oil painting?
The large selection makes it difficult to choose. There are basically two divisions:
The shape. a. Flat, b. Round and c. Filbert (cat´s tongue).
The material. a. Natural hair (pig, sable and mongoose.) b. Synthetic hair.
Painting a portrait I start with the biggest possible pig-hair brush because it has a good loading capacity and it makes a strong mark on the canvas. And filbert because of the possibility to make sharp and a detailed statements without the need to take a small round brush. I end with synthetic filberts to add soft, less-defined marks and for blending. The synthetic round for the highlights and details in the eyes and mouth. Big flat pig-hair for the background. (Sable brushes are often used for glazing and that is what I rarely do.)
Remember this: “Bad brushes makes bad paintings” Pamper yourself with good brushes!
See also this link
The secret is in the canvas.
“The secret is in the canvas”
Poor quality of the canvas is one of the most important holdbacks for beginners. In my classes I have noticed that students underestimate this issue or even they themselves are not aware of. Most of all commercial canvas is poor.
The main problem is that it is too absorbent. Paint almost immediately is sucked into the texture and loses its color strength and brush-strokes become dull and inexpressive. Also it is a headache to get the paint on the surface. This inconvenience is an obstacle for many beginners and because of this people even might start to hate the technique. The canvas should encourage you and welcome your brushstrokes!
I use a doubled, linen canvas and even on this surface I apply at least three layers of gesso. I don´t want a white surface so I mix a small dab of neutral gray of acrylic paint: ivory black and yellow ochre. I add this mixture to my gesso and I get a light gray basic tone.
Why paint shadows transparent and lights opaque?
There is some confusion why to paint shadows transparent and lights opaque. A lot of information can be found on the internet but in my opinion, with far too complicated philosophies. It mainly comes down to two reasons and I will try to explain why this tradition for me is essential.
A picturesque reason: Transparent shadows have a rich quality, opaque shadows just don´t work.
A technical reason: It is much easier to get a good connection to a shadow when the applied paint in the shadow is little. (Painting a portrait I start with the darks, then the halftones and then the lights; an important routine) See also here.
Oil painting errors top-ten
While I was teaching portrait painting (from photography) this week I thought of making a list of the most common errors, in order of importance:
1. Bad photography of the model/bad copies.
2. Poor quality of the canvas, hardly prepared with primer.
3. Wrong brushes. (worn-out or to small)
4. Inaccurate underpainting/drawing.
5. Scanty use of paint.
6. Flesh-tones too light.
7. Fear for the shadow-tones.
8. Inability to see large planes.
9. To much hard edges and transitions. (the eyes, mouth and hairline)
10. Mess on the palette.
The first four can be avoided by better preparation. The rest can be trained relatively easy. Once mastered, the real learning can begin.