Skip to main content

Little Boy Watercolor Portrait demo

One of my students have asked me to post the demo that I did for a workshop on portraits from last week. This is a 2 hour painting (including dry time) using a limited pallette of quin gold, aliz crimson, Ultramarine blue, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber.  Stage 1: Mask out any highlights or if you are really confident you can paint around them. Due to the small size of this little man I masked.
Stage 2 Sunshine : Wet your paper into the hairline, background, even the whites of the eyes. Wait until the sheen is gone from the paper and start dropping in your mid mix of quin gold. I love this color for 2 reasons. 1 it lifts easy, which comes in handy when laying down your road map  and 2 it adds your sunshine.   DRY
Stage 3 I added a little BS and BU just to place a few darks in the eyes and hair. DRY Then mix up a light mix of aliz crimson. This is a high power, staining color and should be used with care. It is way easier to add color then to take it away. Wet his little face again and start adding your turning points, this would be around the outside of the face, the side of the nose... the warm shadows on the facial planes.  If you are finding that your paper is starting to get to dry, STOP, walk away and let it dry. If you overwork the skin will start to get streaky, and on a child that looks pretty garish. :0 You can always glaze in more color later

Stage 4: I added some more darks to the eyes. I also went back in and strengthened the red/oranges a little.

Stage 5: This stage was done in 2 parts. The background was first wet and a little of the blue color was dropped in. The light is coming in from the viewers left and there is a bright hightlight on the side of the face and top of head. So by adding the darker value around that area it will help to pop it later. DRY  I also went in and started adding a few darks to his jacket. I am working a little more of a wet on dry at this point, as I need to control how far the paint moves.  Some shadow colors were around his eyes, chin, right side of his face, dont forget the little divot under his nose and a little shadow under his nose to make it pop out a bit. DRY  He is really starting to look human now.



Stage 6: Final adjustments were made to his face before adding just a simple hairline and a hint of clothing. Hope you enjoy.  
Untitled portrait
4.5 * 4.5 inch
watercolor on 140lb Arches
Labels:

Comments

  1. martinealisonApril 4, 2012 at 10:31 AM

    Bravo et merci pour l'ensemble détaillé de vos explications... Un très joli portrait.
    gros bisous à vous.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Eclectic Studio TammyApril 5, 2012 at 6:38 AM

    Thank you Martine. I get great joy from passing along the information I have learned along the way. Happy painting.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DIY Crayon costume for Halloween

Halloween is my favorite time of year. We spend weeks getting our yard and home decorated all for the night when the little ghosts and goblins come out to play. ;) B started school this year and within her school, they don't do a Halloween per say, they have an orange and black day. So in order to kill 2 birds with one stone, we decided that she is going to be an orange crayon. So with an old t-shirt and a little black felt fabric, this is what I came up with. I think it turned out Awesome! And the best part is that it was a no-sew project. Supplies needed:  1 t-shirt in the size required. 1 box of orange fabric dye (because they didn't' have any orange t-shirts in her size) 1 wooden spoon 1 large container for dying remnant black fabric. I used black felt because that is what I had on hand. 1 pattern for the Crayola font - I used this one Crayola pattern  and made the size adjustments accordingly when I was printing it out. For the crayon label banding, I just wi
Post a Comment
Read more

Halloween Haunt - DIY Rotting Flesh/ Corpsing prop tutorial

Here is one of the techniques I use to attain the rotting flesh look on cheap plastic dollar store Halloween props.  Supplies you will need: plastic body parts or skeletons cheap plastic wrap - it doesn't matter what brand  heat gun or high-temperature hairdryer wood stain ( I used oak because that is what I had laying around) spray paint ( red and black) craft paint (red, black, dark brown, white, grey and green)   First, wrap your cheap skulls or bones in a few layers of plastic food wrap. It doesn't matter what brand. Then take your heat gun and melt areas away until you get your desired look. Some hairdryers may not be able to get hot enough to do this. Then take your wood stain and start adding a little colour.  Color choices are completely up to you but i used red, flesh, dark brown, black, white, grey. On the skull, I added some black spray paint in the hallows of the eyes to add a little more dimension.  Hope this inspires you to try a new prop id
Post a Comment
Read more

Sailboat at sunset watercolor painting tutorial

Just a quick demo on how I painted this sailboat at sunset. Colors used: Indian Yellow, Napthol Red, Alizarin Crimson, Royal Blue, Burnt Sienna and Brillant Orange and permenant ink First draw out your image and mask off your sun spot - dry. I chose to use ink as a base to this painting applying it both directly and using it as a wash to add some shadows. Next wet the entire sky area. Working around your sun spot start by adding a graduated wash of indian yellow from the bottom to about 3/4 the way up, then add in alizarin crimson, and at the top work in a band of royal blue letting it run down a little. DRY The sky is not holding the weight I need it to so I wen over it again using the same colors and technique. This time adding a band of brilliant orange along the bottom. Looking better but still not quite there. So lets dry and move on to another area so that I can come back and judge the values. The sails were added using a mix of BS, brilliant orange and indian yellow. D
Post a Comment
Read more