Portrait painters: use more paint!

Use more paint. Paint with paint; without paint you can´t paint!

When I worked this week on a quick sketch of this portrait, again it came to mind how often I see students paint almost without any paint on the canvas. Far too thin and almost transparent.

Let me give you a quote by John Singer Sargent, our eternal hero:

“The thicker your paint—the more your colour flows.”

I understand why students don´t use more paint. Fear or caution is the main cause. (Rarely is it because of an artistic interpretation.)

• Afraid of losing the underpainting.
• Afraid to mix the wrong colour.
• Afraid to end up in an accumulation of paint flow, thereby drowning in a big muddy mess.

It is important to realize that you can´t make a good painting without a certain amount of paint. Nothing is richer and stronger in colour and value than the full stroke of oil paint.

A few solutions to use more paint:

• Mix a number of basic colours for various flesh tones in advance.
• Mix enough paint every time you think you need a different shade. Load your brush and put it on the right spot. Any correction afterwards is easily achievable.
• Don´t blend large areas.

Of course, the foregoing has to do with the most important thing: good drawing skills. The better these skills, the more secure you feel when you start in colour.

So my eternal recommendation is:  Study as much as possible from a life model.

 

See Related blog post 

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