Composition in Art: Portrait Ideas

what i think is very typical if you just tell anybody make a portrait drawing with head neck and shoulders the default response for the most part is okay let's do a front pose of a figure straight on view and then let's put them right in the middle of the page in fact i bet you anything if you guys go online and you do a google search for student portrait drawing i bet you anything at least 80 percent of the drawings are gonna have that type of format and when i do give these portrait assignments that is oftentimes what i get from students is that exact same dead center composition now you guys have probably heard me say in the past that dead center compositions symmetrical compositions tend to be less engaging because they're very predictable i'm not trying to say that a centered composition can't work because it certainly can it's just most of the time when i see dead centered compositions it's not purposeful it's not because somebody felt that that was really appropriate for the subject matter or the idea they're trying to communicate a lot of the times people are doing that because they just haven't thought about placement so honestly the first step to having a really strong composition is to remember to think about it because a lot of people don't a lot of people go into a portrait so focused on eyes nose and mouth they don't think about where i'm actually going to put the head that doesn't have to be in the middle there's a million other places that you guys could put it so that's what i want you to start thinking about now this is a live q a so i have a lot to cover however i'd love for you guys to jump into the chat box give me your comments your own suggestions for how to compose a portrait and tell me what you're thinking ask me to clarify things i'm happy to do that i find that these streams are always so much more fun when we have multiple voices contributing to the dialogue so i hope you guys will join me in the chat box okay let's look at placement first because this is a contemporary illustrator barry mosher and i think at first glance the positioning of the head seems fairly straightforward it is pretty much centered as a composition but does everybody see how the face the head it's like a little bit lower than you expected to be i would say for a lot of people your run-of-the-mill stereotypical dead center portrait it's usually a little bit higher and so what happens in this composition that i find is really exciting there almost seems to be this feeling of weight that's pushing down on this figure there's almost this gravity that happens in the background because the background is almost two-thirds of the composition is just the background and then you have this very bold dramatic silhouette and so this is such a simple move this is basically just taking that stereotypical dead center composition just taking the head moving it down just a little bit and all of a sudden all the weight distribution in the composition completely changes another thing you can do with portraiture is really emphasize lighting i mean lighting is excellent to have no matter what it's great for showing form if you're trying to make something have a lot more volume to it lighting's a great way to really accentuate that now barry mosher's illustrations are very different because these are wood engravings and so there's no gradients it's all just black shapes and white shapes and the thing is the placement of this head it is right in the middle this one's much more centered than the last composition that we looked at but he offsets the centered composition with this diagonal stripe that is cutting across the lower section of the composition so diagonals in terms of composition are super helpful because they have direction because if you guys have like vertical lines that just go up and down vertical lines in general they tend to be a lot more static because they're stable they don't feel like they're actually going somewhere same thing with horizontal lines like if you have a line that's going across like this there's a stability to that like i remember there's one time i think this is like geez in middle school i went on a whale watch and i get motion sick really fast and that was like the most torturous two hours of my life but i remember i was so sick on that whale watch and one of my teachers who was trying to make me feel better he said well why don't you look at horizon lines some people find that to be somewhat stabilizing because it's a very um stable image to look at as opposed to the boat which is like rocking like crazy and so that's one of the reasons why when you have a perfect horizon line it tends to not be so dynamic and so the thing about this diagonal is that things are pushing upwards and then actually his beard moves this way as well so at first glance this feels like a centered composition but it's actually not because of the way that barry mosher is organizing all of those parts now here is another portrait that is also dead center because we are looking at a more complex drawing in the background and we have a cut out silhouette and we have another head that's actually inside the cutout silhouette this is by the contemporary artist cara walker and cara walker is very much known for her cut-out silhouettes a lot of her work is very charged a lot of it deals with history and race and some of you guys might have seen actually she has a fountain that she created it's a huge piece you should look it up i think it's in london i could be wrong i think it's somewhere in great britain but actually that's a recent piece that she's made but this is more the type of work that she was known for earlier in her career and so at first glance you look at this composition and you just think oh well it's just dead center but the thing is by adding that second profile on the inside of that larger silhouette all of a sudden we have a face pointing this way we have face pointing that way and there's also the layering of that imagery behind that and so actually the negative space becomes very important in this piece and that's the same thing with the prairie motion piece that actually this portrait is much more defined by the negative space than the actual features of the portrait and negative space in composition that's one of those things not a lot of people think about if you're just joining us jump to the chat box give me your tips tell me what you guys think about composing a portrait for the sake of simplicity i'm focusing on portraits this stream that have head neck and shoulders uh at some point i will do one that's full composition will probably really start to break it down in terms of different body parts we've got a lot to talk about in terms of composition okay now here is another portrait this is by the contemporary artist lucian freud and this is that stereotypical dead center symmetrical face on portrait okay and so you might say looking at this that lucy and four is breaking all of the things that i oftentimes am telling students not to do but the thing is though freud does do a couple of subtle things that i do think offsets that directness that that flatness because i think the thing about a face is actually a face on view i think looks way more flat than a three-quarters view because if i look at you guys like this this is about as flat as it gets but if i just tilt my head this way there becomes a feeling of dimension around the face which is not quite as present so there's a couple things that lucy and freud does the first thing is does everybody see that huge cast shadow that's underneath his chin that cast shadow is such a big bold shape that actually really does compete with the background and the thing is the tone of it is a lot more saturated it's a lot darker and so that cast shadow while it feels like it might not be that important in terms of subject matter visually speaking does offset that centered version of this composition another thing too if you guys look at the upper right hand corner that section of that background is a little bit darker and then the left hand side of the painting the background is a lot more gray a lot more muted and so i do think that even though portraits are recognizable images like you can say oh those are eyes nose and mouth and stuff like that it is important i think to look at a portrait through an abstract lens so you can start looking at the bigger shapes and sort of temporarily forget that you're doing a portrait because actually when i was doing portrait commissions when i just got out of art school i think the thing i tortured myself about the most was likeness everybody does that it you can't help it when you do a portrait you always worry oh does it look like them does it look like me and that becomes a huge distraction and for me i think what made a difference for me in terms of getting better at painting portraits was trying to just put out of my head that i'm painting a portrait because there's a lot of psychological baggage in there a face is such a powerful image joey myers is saying composition also seems to include the triangle thing the cast shadow makes each shoulder point to the head oh yeah good point triangles are great because with the three points it's almost like you can't go wrong so that's a really excellent point rebecca is saying when beginning a portrait piece acrylic or oil would you recommend starting with plain shadows and depth and then going in with detail or completing the piece feature by future you've tried both techniques i don't know which one looks more professional i mean i would say rebecca my personal preference is to start by blocking just large areas of shapes i don't really like to go feature by feature because inevitably what's happening is that you're fragmenting the portrait when you do that like if you paint one eye finish it paint one eye finish it paint one mouth and finish it you're not seeing the visual relationships between the figure like whenever i paint a figure or i'm doing a portrait i say to students look at the two ears and compare them which one's higher which one's lower you don't paint the ears in isolation you have to paint the ears in relation to where they're located to the nose you know there's all those like proportion systems and measurements and lines i mean you can find a million of those online i don't like those because i feel like it becomes this template that we try to fit people into it doesn't make any sense to me because every single person on this planet is unique i mean doesn't that just blow your mind that yeah sure some people look somewhat similar but ultimately we are our own person and so i think rebecca if you want a portrait to come out cohesive and for the structure to have a fluidity to it that you do have to address the whole thing one thing i say to students is when you work on a portrait you can't linger on one area for too long you have to work on one section make yourself move on work a little bit move on so that every single part of the portrait progresses at the same rate i see this all the time where people just render the eye to death every single little piggy detail and they haven't touched anything else blank background no hair no neck nothing i don't think that's a great way to go about doing it i think that people can do whatever works for them but i just think conceptually speaking that has helped me a lot in terms of getting a structure that really starts to make more sense now the other thing i think that happens too is that people put way too much emphasis on the eyes nose and the mouth to carry the portrait here's an example this is by jan von ike and this is called portrait of a man but really this is not a portrait of a man in the literal sense this is a portrait of the guy's headdress i feel like the headdress is way more important than his face because his face in the context of this portrait it's pretty generic in a way i wouldn't say that he's that distinctive in terms of the facial expression but this huge headdress that he has i mean doesn't that thing look like it's four times the volume of his head and it has this massiveness to it that completely redefines this portrait and so what i find a lot in portraits is that there's so much emphasis on the eyes nose and mouth that people forget about other features in the head neck and shoulders that become just as important if not more think about the people you know who are really people who are invested in the shape of their hair the silhouette of their clothing i mean i'm the type of person i cannot be bothered to do more than just wake up and brush my hair in two seconds but i know for a lot of people their hair is such a big part of their identity like here's an example for those of you guys who have watched the simpsons okay think about sideshow bob okay sideshow bob he's got that crazy huge bunch of hair and if you took that hair away from sideshow bob and you just gave him regular run-of-the-mill short hair he would not be the same character that he is and so i'm not saying that hair has to be critical for every single portrait you paint but i think it's definitely an area for visual potential that i don't think people really tap into as much as they could if you're just joining us jump into the chat box tell me what's going on what are your struggles with portraiture composing placement all of those different types of things i'm happy to give portrait techniques in terms of anatomy and stuff like that as well i probably will do another stream that focuses more on that today i want to talk more about composition but if it comes up i'm happy to do that i think it's fine for these to be pretty organic conversations here's another one this one's actually really similar to the yan van ike portrait this is vermeer and again this figure is largely defined by this gigantic red hat not just in terms of the dramatic shape of the hat but also the saturation of the hat that's like a really bold like cadmium red about as saturated as it gets and actually do you guys see how vermeer actually de-emphasizes the facial expression so actually most of the face is in shadow there's just one little section on that face that has lighting on it and the rest of it is this like very muted green tone yeah joey that rim lighting is oh so good if you guys have never seen a vermeer painting in real life you gotta put that on your bucket list like that that should be something everybody in the planet has to do before they die you have to see vermeer painting in person because it's just shocking how precious his paintings are they're like little jewels i just love them hello seaward one thank you for jumping into the chat box let me know what you guys think give me your tips tell me portraits that you enjoy portrait artists we're here to talk about composition how to get things going hello ayodeji and tell me where you guys are from we had people from china all over the u.s from australia england yesterday tell me where you guys are from i just love hearing where you guys are seaward warren calls it the vermeer glow i feel like they should market that as like some sort of um skin product it sounds like something like that all right oh karen's from oregon fabulous okay also this has to be one of the quintessential hairdos of human history portrait of the flavian woman this goes all the way back to ancient rome and talk about being defined by your hair i mean i love this portrait and i saw it it's at the capitol line museum in rome when i was a college student i'm studying abroad and i don't know but every time i look at her hair all i think about is ramen noodles because they look just like that but it's like not just the front features but also the back is such a big surprise like you don't expect the hair to turn to this huge wrap in the background and so when i look at this portrait the hair is definitely the main spectacle same thing similar to that van ike piece we were just looking at the spectacle is the headdress it is not the face the face is certainly there but the face almost feels like an accessory compared to the hair and the mass and the volume rebecca's from ottawa we've got joey from dallas texas working on your art school application portfolio fabulous well this is a great time to jump in because honestly art school portfolios yes they're specific tips but everything's applicable you can't learn other things about visual art that will not help you in that area so great that you guys are all here okay now another thing you guys can play with is to really think about the angle of the head and also the tilt of the head because so often it's just this straight on view okay but look at what happens when jenny seville this contemporary british painter she takes the head which we're so used to seeing like this and goes just throws it on its side and this is a very startling image for one thing just flipping the head on the side is a very big change that a lot of people are not prepared for but also does everybody see how the head is on the floor and so that is a narrative element about this painting that you just don't have in some of these other pieces like if we go back and we look at vermeer this is what you expect with a portrait is somebody's sitting or standing upright you see the shoulders very visibly when you look at jenny seville you just see a little bit of one shoulder her head is tilted this way and so then you think well why is she on the floor most people are not lying on the floor in that way and you wonder did she get knocked down is she resting is she hiding it opens up so many narrative possibilities and that's what i think a really compelling portrait should do oh we got another person from texas and seaward one's working on a piece that accentuates the double chin oh seaward one you know who you gotta look at you have to look at fernando batero if you have not already because he is probably the king of double chins you make these like massive bodies they're incredibly over exaggerated but he would be a good artist for you to look at so obviously jenny savelle is doing something very severe here in terms of orientation but it doesn't have to be that severe so for example we can look at modigliani and his portrait composition look at the angle of the head compared to the angle of the neck okay so the head tilts this way the neck tilts this way and actually anatomically speaking this is more accurate in terms of the angle of the neck than even the jenny seville portrait because if you guys look at somebody from the side view actually your neck is not a straight up tube it's actually tilted out so if i give you guys a profile if i look this way i mean if i stand more upright you'll see my neck actually plunges forward it's hard to see i mean you'd have to look very carefully but i think that so often people think that the neck the shoulders neck and the head they think it's like blocks they think it's like oh you just stack one thing on top of another but it's not like that it's actually much more the way that modigliani has it even though this is like super distorted and exaggerated and simplified this is more anatomically accurate in terms of the angles of the neck and the head and i think that's something people don't do often enough is really think about the posture of your subject okay because the thing is i think with a portrait people think oh well there's not that much to work with head neck and shoulders i can't really say anything i don't have a full figure to work with but the thing is you don't need a full figure to say something about posture like i was saying to some of my high school students a lot of them are really into character design and i was explaining to them that look a lot of you guys do the exact same very stiff straight up posture for your fingers and posture and character design is so important like if somebody is standing very upright like this that's different than somebody who sits like this so for example if we look at pio della francesca this guy just looks really solemn okay and it's not just the very serious look on his face it's also how upright his neck is like it's so upright that doesn't it make you a little bit uncomfortable whereas if you look at the modigliani piece this feels like somebody who actually could move their body if they wanted to even though it's super distorted but the piero della francesca piece this almost feels like somebody whose posture has been frozen and i do think that this is very typical of the renaissance because the renaissance really had a formality to it i think a lot of costuming was very majestic and so that really makes sense to me so um we've got piero della francesca but then also look at tomorrow day lempika she's very much associated with like art deco and she's very like flashy super fashionable like she does a lot of portraits really feel like people are like on the go in like a very i just got out of a cocktail party and now i'm out in the town type of thing like so different than pierre dolan francesca i mean this guy just looks like the most uptight person alive and you look at dilem pika's figure and and she is like totally out on the town which is really fun rebecca is saying what acrylic paint basic colors would you recommend for mixed skin tone highlights and shadow i'm looking to mix a palette that's pretty drastic like jenny seville rebecca i think what i would recommend i usually mix two tones okay so the first base i have like a flesh tone and of course it depends on the model that you're painting if i'm painting a self-portrait what i usually like to start with is like a titanium white and then i put like a little bit of cadmium yellow light sometimes i use lemon yellow that's pretty good too like a very sour yellow color i like cadmium red and the lizard crimson is great for um getting flesh tone so let me just type this into the chat box so you guys have this so highlighted flesh tone for light or fair toned skin i would say like titanium white plus cadmium red and a little lemon yellow okay and then i like to mix a shadow tone and so what i do with the shadow tone is i take a piece of the flesh tone and then i usually mix like ultramarine with a little bit of alizarin crimson so you take the flesh let's see take the flushed mixture and add a touch of let's see ultramarine blue and a bit of a lizard crimson yeah i'm sorry we don't have a portrait painting tutorial yet trust me it's on my very long to do list but um rebecca you might want to look at our acrylic painting tutorial because alex rowe who does that painting tutorial he does this really cool thing where he uses complementary colors as the under painting and it's really really cool so i'm going to put this in acrylic painting tutorial and actually you know what's really funny i have the painting right in front of me it's like right in the back let me just grab it it's behind my um here we go so this is the painting that alex rowe does in our acrylic painting tutorial and then do you guys see this lobster okay so a lobster is obviously like an orangey warm tone so what alex rhode does in that tutorial is he actually does the underpainting in the opposite color so in the underpainting he paints the lobster blue he paints this let's see okay so this turnip which is like a little bit yellowy he paints it purple and i think this dragon fruit was painted green and red and like this just blew my mind because i had never done an under painting like that before myself and when alex suggested it i was like what what is wrong with you but then i watched him do it and i was like wow this makes a lot of sense so rebecca even though that's not necessarily a portrait painting tutorial it might give you some good ideas for how to get colors to interact together because my issue with um people mixing skin tone is oftentimes they are too quick to add white as a highlight and black to make something darker and i'm not a big fan of that i tend to like using purple a little bit more because it's a dark color but it's not so dull like black and often times if i'm adding highlights it's not straight white it's usually white with a little bit of cerulean blue or a little bit of cadmium yellow and if you guys want actually you can look at my oil painting tutorial which again is not a portrait tutorial but i do talk a lot about basic color theory and color mixing so i'm going to just put this in so color mixing and color theory is in my oil painting tutorial right here and eventually we will get to that portrait painting tutorial at some point okay so moving on from tamara dilempica let's look at bob stock who is one of my absolute favorite illustrators he's a contemporary illustrator i'm sure you guys have seen his work before because he's done a lot of covers for the new yorker he's also done some wonderful children's book he does editorial illustration he's extremely versatile illustrator but he's done these wonderful portraits and also caricatures as well some of you guys probably are recognizing the film director john waters so this is a caricature and i was surprised when i found out that bob stock's work it's all digital i was like that's crazy and i think i found a video online that was like a sped up process of him working in photoshop you might look it up on youtube because it's incredible like i just never thought that somebody could be that fluid and expressive with the digital medium but i guess that's because i'm not a digital artist so it doesn't make as much sense to me but he's one of my favorite digital artists working today joey is saying the best practice is to paint color wheels a billion times to get down how to mix and match yes and the other thing that's helpful too is make friends with your palette knife guys so many people i talk to who paint they want tips from me and the first thing i say is are you using a palette knife and people are like no i mix with my brushes and you can't do that you have to use a palette knife in fact i feel like i have a palette knife somewhere in here i just picked it up the other day what happened to all my palette knives maybe i put them away anyway if you guys go look at my tutorial i talk a lot about pelt knife technique because when i paint especially with oils i spend like a good 30 minutes just mixing colors i mean aren't there like all those instagram videos where it's just like a palette knife like i just feel like i could do that all day it just would be like very fun and very satisfying so rebecca i don't know if you're using a palette knife but if you're not get one and get a metal one and look at the video and let me explain in the video to you how to actually use that tool because a palette knife is a somewhat awkward tool it's not that easy to use in the beginning if you've never used it before and so much of the time when i've taught introductory painting classes i had to spend a lot of time telling people what not to do because a lot of people handle it um the wrong way or they don't use enough pressure so that's a really important tool for you to know how to do so the other thing you can do with portraits is that i don't think you guys that having correct proportions is necessarily always that important because don't you think it's incredible that this portrait of john waters is so distorted i mean the guy looks like a baseball bat like the head is like not even close to being a normal shaped human head but it looks just like him like to me this feels more like john waters than a lot of the photos that i've seen of john waters and i was talking to lauren welch about this she's another teaching artist here at arprov that you can have a portrait drawing that is physically accurate that really describes how somebody looks but it actually is sometimes something which doesn't capture the personalities well because there's a sterility to that accuracy and what i tell a lot of students is that accuracy is not important i think what's more important is that you capture the person so you can have somebody like bob stock who severely distorts the figure but it really feels like john waters i mean i really feel like for those of you guys who know john waters there's a quirkiness to it there's sort of an odd bizarre look even like the color of the skin being blue is perfect so i love that rebecca says oh you do look up use a palette knife yeah that's great and another thing you guys can try as an exercise this is how i really learned how to paint with my colors is to do a palette knife painting so put down your brushes just do a portrait study with only the palette knife then you have to mix that was one of my favorite exercises that i did when i was in art school that and i had a painting teacher who told me we could only paint with three colors red yellow and blue and obviously white as well and i thought i was gonna have a heart attack when he told us that because at the time i was used to painting with like eight yellows i just felt like i was gonna have a total meltdown but you know what that semester that he forced me to paint with three colors wow i had to mix and i had to get really innovative and that taught me how to mix so actually i'm a big advocate for somebody who doesn't have tons of years of painting experience that a limited palette fewer colors on your palette will force you to mix more because if you have eight blues and five greens and seven browns there's not a very compelling reason to mix that aggressively but if you have three colors you have to mix a lot oh yeah he does sort of look like steve buscemi seaward one that's funny i guess i never thought about that okay now in terms of distortion though you can also do it to a much more extreme level and so here's dana schutz who is a contemporary new york painter this is a piece called face eater from 2004 and you can see here she's just like totally rearranging everything i mean i've always looked at this portrait and felt that there was this almost like cannibalistic quality to this piece that the face was like turning itself inside out so this is definitely not remotely an accurate piece but oh my god this is mesmerizing like i could definitely look at this for a long time karen is saying what do you think of smooth blending versus leaving some unfinished parts of the face in your portrait i mean karen i think that's a matter of personal choice i don't think that one is better than another so i don't think that you really have to prioritize one over another i mean i think you just have to be very conscious of what you're doing so um all right sherry i'll acknowledge you but please don't type hi eight times into the chat box because it makes it hard for other people to get in their voice so anyway um so yeah i mean i think ultimately you guys have to make a choice about stylistically how you want to do your portrait because like okay here's dana schutz and she sort of has a very primitive way of painting like the way she applies the brush work it's not smooth it's not blended it's very to the point however if you look at somebody like pirodella francesca it's like you can't even see a single brushstroke in there like he totally hides everything about it and i actually really like francis bacon's portraits because they are really dynamic but he does such a great job of layering and transparency and so much movement within that phase i mean his faces i think really verge on becoming very grotesque but it really feels like the decisions he's making as far as keeping things less blended or more blended they feel very deliberate so i guess what i'm trying to say karen is that you can do it however you want but whatever you do make sure it's a decision that you're deciding to do it that way because i think what i hear from a lot of students is when i question them about specific things they'll say things to me like oh well it just turned out that way so yeah i just i'm gonna keep it that way and i'm like okay that's fine that you can do that but i do think that as artists we have a certain degree of creative control that i think we should exert because i don't think everything should be a complete accident i mean i think accidents are great i think accidents can definitely inform your process for sure but i don't know that you can um really rely on that all the time like you really have to be considering that okay so there is francis bacon and then i want to lastly talk to you guys about artists who i think are really working with surface and texture so for example this is a little bit more of an unusual piece number one because it's a sculpture and you really have to experience this piece it's by the contemporary british paint not painter contemporary british sculptor mark quinn and i actually saw this piece in person i think it was at the sachi gallery in london saw this many many years ago and so just so you understand what this piece is it's called self but it's literally his frozen blood yes this is not for the squeamish person but basically what he did is he created like a life cast of his own face that was three-dimensional and then don't ask me to explain the process i have no idea how he actually went about doing this but it's frozen blood that is in the shape of a life-cast version of his face and what's strange about this piece is that it's in a refrigerator because it's frozen so you can't just i mean obviously it would melt if it was not like that so i think what's creepy about this piece that i did not anticipate when i read about it like in a book is that there's this like humming sound coming from this portrait when you approach it that that's creepy and very strange and it makes it even more alarming to look at i mean i think what's strange about this piece it's not just the surface texture it almost has this like death mask look to it because of the closed eyes and you can all see like the little imperfections of the life casting as well but the thing is it's created from this material which we do associate with being alive which is blood but then the blood is frozen and so it's i don't know this piece really blows me away in terms of content seaward ones saying i've done too many self-portraits but i literally just pulled up my gouache palette to start a new one you know there is nothing wrong with seaward one with doing self-portraits because you know what you are your ultimate model you are available 24 7. you will never turn yourself down you will cooperate the whole time i logged so many self-portraits when i was in art school just because of convenience and i think that it's a smart way to just get a lot of life experience i mean obviously it's great if you are in a class and you can draw from a pose model and oftentimes i have a lot of fun drawing my friends like just quick sketches and things like that so certainly you can do that but i don't know like i if you guys haven't um looked at rembrandt's self-portraits lately okay look up rembrandt self-portraits and look at the scope of them from beginning to end because what's remarkable about rembrandt self-portraits is that number one he did so many okay i'm sure seaward won however number of self-portraits you've done i bet you anything rembrandt did more because there's so many and the other thing is that rembrandt did them his whole life so you can find a self-portrait of rembrandt when he was like 20 years old he he looks like this fresh young kid okay he's got this like vitality and what's interesting is that as you watch him paint himself throughout the years not only does his physical appearance change because his body is aging but also his painting technique changes and that is the part that's incredible so when you look at a rembrandt series of self-portraits you're basically seeing a documentation of somebody aging not just in terms of their physical appearance but also artistically so look at those rembrandt portraits because they're really outstanding okay so moving on in terms of texture let's look at marilyn minter who is one of my favorite contemporary artists and her work i think is largely photography maybe she does some digital manipulation i have no idea what her process is so if you guys want to know about her process she's got a website and by the way all of the artists who i am talking about in the stream today all of their names and their links are in the video description below so you guys can check that out if you want to read more about these artists but the thing i really like about marilyn minter's work is it it really is about that surface like this isn't even i think one of her most sumptuous portraits you look her up later she's a lot of images of close-ups of mouths with like pearls and jewels like protruding they're weird portraits because on one hand they feel incredibly lavish and decadent because of the sheen and the saturation of the color and also just this shine that's happening and then also the jewels and the pearls and everything but on the other hand i have definitely looked at marilyn minter's work and almost felt sick to my stomach at the same time so it's this strange feeling when you look at her portraits of feeling totally seduced but also really feeling repelled at the same time i don't know does anybody else feel that way about marilyn mitch's portrait because that's totally my reaction i don't know how you guys interpret her work but i think her work is really unusual in that it's hard for me to say is it beautiful is it ugly because i think it keeps fluctuating between the two and i find that really fascinating because i think what's interesting about portraits too is that this idea of beauty has changed so much from culture to culture time period to time period i mean if you guys look at peter paul rubens i'll put his name into the chat box peter paul rubins in that time period they thought that having a larger figure was beautiful and that the bigger your figure the richer and better well-off well-fed you were and that is so not the case today i mean today i feel that i mean it depends on where you are obviously but at least in the us and a lot of those like glossy magazines it's like the thinner the better and so that's a very different mindset as well oh lahona that's a good take on it objectification to the extreme i didn't even think about it that way i really like that yeah i love hearing different points of view you guys that's what makes discussion a critique valuable is when we hear multiple viewpoints because in my classroom whenever i do critiques i really push students to give me the opposite point of view so if we say something like well i think this is working really well i oftentimes will push the class for somebody else to give the opposite point of view because it's so important to be acknowledging that lahore is saying it's so well done but over the top in its extremeness yes i i mean i think that is the point of her work is that it's so just so dramatic in those terms i mean it's sort of like she's wiped vaseline all over the entire figure and the gloss is just like oh my god it's like lip gloss to the total ultimate extreme so i really love her work lahaina's saying the other thing about expressing myself is finding out what i really know yeah i i think that's a great way to put it because i think when you make work it's like saying something out loud and i know that for me oftentimes i work out my thoughts by saying them out loud i encourage a lot of my students like if you guys are having a hard time brainstorming coming up with an idea talk to somebody talk it out that is sometimes a lot better and i think making artists somewhat like that too okay this is leon golob and he's so different than marilyn minter in that his work is very gritty almost to the point that the texture feels painful i mean part of that i think is knowing a little bit about leon golub if you look up his work your contemporary artist he just died a few years ago but a lot of his work number one is huge like gigantic life-size figures mural type paintings but a lot of his pieces are about um like for example he had a whole series about the vietnam war he has a lot of pieces about torture um prisoners of war like very heavy very violent imagery and so i think given the subject matter that he explores this grit that's on the surface of the flesh totally makes sense to me because i think a lot of people when they paint portraits a lot of people are after like a certain degree of accuracy that oh i want you to be able to see that it's a face and i just love seeing artists who just throw that totally out because for most people flush is like a softer material i mean it depends on the person it depends on the age of the person and everything because obviously your skin changes as you grow older but i mean nobody has skin like this like that this skin that you see in leon golov's portrait it almost looks like straw like it it's it hurts to look at that skin and then you look at the boldness of the features they almost look like they've been cut out of those forms so this is a very volumetric face but that harshness of that texture i think there's a physical pain going on in there and if you research more of leon gollum's pieces you will see that there is very much that type of thing going on so i hope that you guys can see that in terms of portrait composition that there are many many more options than you think are actually in there and a head neck and shoulders is not a limited way to think about composition it's just that you have to get off the reliance upon eyes nose and mouth because a lot of people whenever i teach portrait drawing they start there first they draw the eyes they draw the nose they draw the mouth and then they draw the face around the facial expressions which to me doesn't make a lot of sense structurally because in terms of anatomy the eyes nose and the mouth there's nothing structural about them okay your eye is a big squishy round wet eyeball thing your nose is cartilage and your lips are just tissue and really what you need to look at more things like the cheekbones the jaw bone your forehead the eye sockets that is what you got to tackle first in a portrait and by the way if you guys want some tips for drawing portraits we do have this self-portrait crayon tutorial where i do go into the anatomy so if you guys want stuff that's much more in-depth definitely do that oh thanks for popping in joey very cool i really appreciate everybody showing up so this is a self-portrait drawing tutorial with anatomy tips for drawing a face because i mean trust me at some point i will definitely get to an anatomy tutorial but that's going to be a while guys that is not a tutorial i'm going to throw it together overnight but until i do get a chance to do that that tutorial should at least give you a little bit of information for how to navigate the anaconda structure of a face okay i want you guys to know that if you are a patreon supporter you not only get rewards because you can get exclusive content you can join our facebook critique group there's all kinds of cool rewards you can get but also on top of the rewards you can get entered automatically into a monthly giveaway and you can get a free portfolio critique a free website critique you can get mystery original artwork you can get mystery art supplies definitely and those of you guys who are already supporting us on patreon thank you so much we could not do this without you guys you guys are like the inner fire that's holding us together and oh my god we are barely keeping it together but you guys are the glue that makes that happen so thank you so much all of you guys who have been supporting us those of you who just joined us thank you for joining and i hope some of you guys will consider that because we do rely entirely on donations okay all of our content is a hundred percent free none of our tutorials have a pay wall or anything like that i want to keep this very accessible but for us to do that we need your support on patreon so i really hope you guys will think about that lahona is saying so does the background or lack thereof make a difference oh absolutely i mean i think it depends on the piece okay because you can definitely have something like this delum pika piece has like no background because the face just fills the entire composition and then there are the more sort of run-of-the-mill curascuro pieces like this is very much the face emerging of the darkness you can have something like that but also you have something like cara walker's piece where the background is actually way more intricate than the portrait the portrait is this cut out silhouette and so the silhouette compared to the complexity of the background has a very different type of presence so there's no correct way to really do an effective background i think the important thing is that you don't ignore it entirely or treat the background as an area to color in because once you start saying oh there's a background i got to fill it in it ends up looking really fake and it gets really flat like even this lucy and freud painting that we were looking at background is nothing special trust me but do you guys see how there is still some variation in there that upper right hand corner is a little darker a little bit more gray a little bit more purple on the lower section even if you look at the minter piece there is like this hint of almost like the humidity that's like say in a shower or something like dripping down so it does give you a context and then i like jenny seville's piece because her head is like on a floor and it's also on a reflective surface and so then you think what is she on a mirror and so that i think is enough you don't have need to have backgrounds that are huge or super complicated but you do need to address it that's the important thing is just thinking about it and keeping going with that in that way so anyway if you guys missed it i also want to let you know that in addition to patreon we also have options to purchase a portfolio critique or if you would like to purchase a skype session i think for a lot of artists it's very hard to get guidance to get support i mean how many of you guys here in the stream right now really do feel like you are working on your own i mean obviously i'm sure some of you guys are students and so maybe you're working in a school environment you have peers and you have teachers and stuff like that but i do think for a lot of artists it is a very solitary pursuit i feel very lucky because i teach out of school i'm constantly talking to students and my colleagues but i know not everybody has that as a resource and a lot of people do feel that they are sort of on their own that they're self-taught that they're trying to figure things out by themselves so i'd be curious those of you who are listening right now tell me if you are really in you're on your own making your work or if you do feel that you have the support system of say a school or maybe an organization or something but that's why i think these live streams are great places where if you are on your own you can have that type of interaction with people because when i was in high school i was on my own there no internet like i didn't have that in the 90s and now i i just look at the opportunities people have to interact online and i just wonder how different my life would have been yeah lahona i think it's so common for people to be on their own and thank you guys for tapping into our community because it's like every single one of you guys enriches this experience i feel like since i started art prof my world is so much bigger i mean don't get me wrong i love my academic community and my students and my colleagues but compared to the larger world my school environment is a tiny little speck of dust and so i just i'm so happy to be a part of this gigantic universe of people that i don't think i would have discovered if i didn't have this wonderful platform so anyway you guys thank you so much for tuning in and i will see you next time

Channel: Art Prof: Create & Critique

Views: 19,100

Keywords: art critique, art critique example, artist critique, artist critique example, critique art, critique artwork, high school art, high school artist, how to critique art, how to critique art example, how to critique art for students, how to critique art in class, how to critique artwork, how to critique artwork example, how to talk about art, how to talk about artwork, mixed media art, mixed media painting, mixed media collage, gold leaf, gold leaf painting, gold leaf art

Id: 1-gA3QUA_F4

Length: 52min 40sec (3160 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019