How to Paint Portraits with Just Two Colours | Watercolour Tutorial

good morning good morning how are we all doing today so for today's video I'm going to be painting some monochrome portrait studies I thought it would be nice to do a chill little Sketchbook painting session and just chat and check in with you guys first off I hopped onto Pinterest and found a couple of portrait references once I had a few references to go with I started lightly sketching them out onto the page with some super faint lines I always start with these soft lines that are usually quite blocky in shape mapping out the outer Silhouettes and the general on features like the eyes the nose and lips I tend to do this as a way of translating the reference into simplified shapes just kind of seeing the bigger picture to start with it's a way of me mapping things out without focusing too much on the details just yet I'll pencil in the jawline the neck and even the head shape as almost rectangular forms in this initial sketching stage and once I do have those simplified shapes and features mapped out in place I then go in with a darker pencil and start focusing on the little details and refining things to make sure the placement is all correct and then afterwards I usually clean up my line work again with the darker 2B pencil but this time I wanted to try using a colored pencil for Line work I always see other artists do this with their line work they use like a red or a blue colored pencil and in the end it achieves a brighter less intense finished linework effect um since it kind of gets hidden underneath all the paint so I figured I'd give it a try and see what it does for my paintings [Music] once the colored Line work was all done it was time to paint I painted the first layer as a really light wash using alazone crimson and filling in the whole silhouette shape of her head to make the highlights I made sure to leave specific areas on her face unpainted Ed like a cheekbone eye and nose bridge then in a second layer of the same colors but slightly darker I deepen some of the midtones to create some form and depth to her face as well as her bandana with a slightly more pigmented wash of paint I'm using a pulling technique to slowly build the forms around her face [Music] and for the bandana I use sharp and angular shapes for the Shadows trying to imitate the texture of fabric [Music] crinkling in this third and final layer I'm using a much less diluted Alazan crimson and painting in what would be considered a the Shadows or the black of the photo reference you can immediately see the difference this makes with just a few small brush strokes this simple layer creates all the necessary details for us to recognize the portrait as a face and the light [Music] source this singular brush stroke of the jaw Shadow was definitely one of the most satisfying moments I did get a bit bored of seeing just pink so I ended up adding a little bit of purple just to spice things up a little bit with this next portrait I applied the same process basically my goal for these studies was to paint in two or three layers focusing purely on the highlights and shadows to achieve as much detail as possible with fewer layers in other words highlights midtones and shadows I would be using that first layer to create the silhouette and place the highlights of un painted areas the second layer to create more depth in the midtones and the third layer using the most pure and dark shade to substitute for blacks and [Music] shadows here I'm just using an undiluted paint in what would be the blacks or the Shadows from the portrait reference immediately even the slightest details of this dark blue makes a word of difference in this portrait study [Music] now this third portrait was probably my favorite one the layering and building of Shadows just went so smoothly and it was just just fun to execute I also feel like I really nailed the detail of her likeliness and soft expression I find that when drawing portraits of people I get super self-conscious about whether I can actually achieve the true likeliness of a person I tend to sometimes fill in gaps based on my own assumed Anatomy knowledge rather than always drawing from observation it's why I admire caricature artists so much they have this own skill to immediately capture someone's features and even exaggerate and distort them but still make them look very much like them it's a skill that I envy so much for example I might drawing someone from observation but in some parts like the eyes or maybe the nose or something I'll just make up parts of the face based on my anatomy experience rather than capturing it from observation [Music] but again I got bored of just orange and decided to spice things up a little bit by throwing in a complimentary teal shade to build the Shadows instead while this teal isn't exactly a dark shade the sheer contrast of the orange and the teal itats something in my brain it just felt so fun and satisfying definitely a color combination I need to Revis it again [Music] so while I paint these last two portraits let's have a chat how are we all doing how's everyone's 2024 going so far last year I took a year off YouTube and in that year of absence a lot has changed and happened one of the most exciting things that's happened is that I've since worked with magic the Gathering and that has been the most insane experiences to date almost 2 years ago now my own set of cards was released in what's called a secret L artist drop and I had four of my own artworks printed officially on these cards I woke up one day and just received a flood of emails from people congratulating me on the set since I had no idea when it was coming out so I was just as surprised as everyone else I've continued to work with magic gathering on a few artworks since then attended a few magic events and have been lucky enough to be warmly welcomed by the incredible Community thus far it's honestly been such a surreal experience and I'm hoping to continue working with them in the years to come uh what else uh last year I also had my first Gallery exhibition in a few years my last gallery show was back in 2020 and after that I had a pretty bad burnout so I had to take a step back from some Gallery work but finally feeling in a much better place last year I showed at Cory hord Gallery in La A small collection of Works which centered around the theme of fables which was pretty sick as of lat I've also been trying to experiment a lot more with pushing Comfort zones again over the past few years I've honestly really sat down to just painful fun which is why this Sketchbook has been going on since 2021 and is still incomplete so I've been trying to get into a habit of cracking open this very same Sketchbook to try new techniques and experiment with different processes I've actually come up with a bunch of new things that I'm pretty excited to explore further and take into this next era of my work in even more exciting news over the past few months I've actually been working on probably my biggest project today it's something child me would never have dreamed would become a reality and I'm pretty sure I can talk about it now because by the time this video is out I think I would have already announced it it's my own artwork it's something I'll talk a bit more about further on but it's coming out next month uh in May so if any of you guys are interested or want to know more about it I probably have already shared more information about it on my Instagram and my other soci socials so yeah that's a quick summary of some things that have been going on [Music] recently now this last portrait was pretty interesting to work on cuz I had to figure out how to shade defined muscles muscles often don't have harsh edges or forms so I find that there's a very fine and subtle line between highlight and midtones a bit too harsh and muscles end up looking unrealistic and your subject looks roed up while anything too subtle you wouldn't even know that muscle was there kind of tricky but fun to learn and figure [Music] out with all the studies done I decided to add some razzled dazzle and just threw in some splashes of color and washes to the background totally unnecessary but I thought it would bring some of the portraits more forward and also add some color to the spread just a nice little Finishing [Music] Touch anyway that brings us to the end of today's video This was meant to just be a chill draw pain ch chat session so I hope you guys enjoyed it I hope you guys didn't mind just hanging out with me as I did some portrait studies as always I hope you guys are having an awesome day don't forget to make more art and I'll see you guys soon [Music]

Channel: kelogsloops

Views: 100,517

Keywords: Watercolor, art, painting, drawing, watercolour, tutorial, paint, draw, how to paint, how to watercolor, watercolor for beginners, beginner, resource, art tutorial, art guide, guide, portrait, faces, how to draw faces, how to paint faces, skin tones, skin tone, color mix, watercolor techniques, technique, art style, style, surrealism, pop surrealism, instagram art, Winsor newton, Daniel Smith, portraits, studies, portrait study, art study, monochrome, art challenge, sketchbook, sketch

Id: f9BTVRWpe-8

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024