Painting Portrait Tips / Lots of information about how to paint a portrait
Sometimes I wonder why I want to paint a good portrait. Where does that fervour come from? What about my portrait painting and inspiration. I’ve never been able to answer that question. And it should stay like that, I guess. That everlasting urge, that gruelling passion; I have learned to live with it. It was not always an easy road. More than once, I was jealous of people without any ambition. Continue reading “Portrait painting and inspiration.”
Last week I told you about the female nude commissions. And, I wrote that only during the photo session does it become clear how the model will be depicted. This post is again about Improvising and portrait painting. Continue reading “Improvising and portrait painting”
After twenty-five years of commissioned portraits there are many anecdotes I can tell. I have had some peculiar portrait commissions.
I have met a lot of people. Occasionally there was something special about a job, like the two times I got an enquiry for a female nude painting. In the first one, the client was the model´s husband; the client making the other request was the model herself. She wanted to give the portrait as a present to her husband on the day of the wedding. Continue reading “Peculiar portrait commissions.”
This week, a brief advice:
Deep shadows are hot! Never use black or blue in the darkest parts of the mouth and sometimes in the nostrils. Your shadows will die and refuse to match with the surrounding areas. Continue reading “Deep shadows are hot”
Carpentry for portrait painting. As I get the opportunity I love to do craftwork, preferably in wood. I always wanted to be a carpenter, I have written about this before. And I’ll confess something else to you. For a long time, carpentry gave me more pleasure than painting. Believe me. Continue reading “Carpentry for portrait painting”
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. Continue reading “Portrait painters: use more paint!”
If you have the intention to start working from life model try to find some friends to join you and agree a fixed day and hour in the week. It is good to have some obligation.
More than once people asked how a novice portraitist must decide his prices. I remember I once said: If you don’t have any orders you are either too expensive, or you have too little quality. If you have too many commissions, it may be that you are too cheap.
An interesting book that I am currently reading is “The lives of Jan Six”, written by the Dutch historian Geert Mak. I do not know if there is an English translation. Continue reading “Art flows to where the money is”
I’m often criticized because I explain how to paint a portrait from photography. Working from life is the only true religion, I always hear. I never answer because I know how things are in my profession. I say it again loud and clear: almost all my colleagues use photography when it comes to a commission. Only, they would rather keep silence in public. Anyway, I do not want to talk about that.
The exposure. The lefthand picture shows a portrait that I painted from life in my studio during our Tuesday sessions. I always take a picture of the model before we stop. That shot you see on the right. A major handicap in photography can be seen at a glance. The light-dark contrast is too big. In particular, the light parts suffer from the loss of the subtle nuances. I notice in my classes that many people overlook that phenomenon. So make sure that the print that you’re working from is not too light and that there is difference between the light and the high-lights.
Finally: of course work from life. Study as much as possible with a live model in front of you. The more training in direct perception the more your work from photography improves.
More posts on working from photography:
More posts on painting from life model:
Portrait painting and farming. Are there similarities? No. Although … I am a portrait painter and I married a farmer’s daughter. So: Portrait painter at the farm Continue reading “Portrait painter at the farm”