Portrait Painting Tutorial | Breaking The Rules

one of the most beautiful things about the art of portrait painting is that we don't always have to do everything the exact same way every single time it's not about following the rules it's about understanding the principles behind the rules here we have our model Gabby and I'm gonna keep an image of her to the top left corner of your screen so you can refer to it as the painting develops all right I'm going to start off by listing off the colors that I'll be using today so starting from the top left corner I have LED white burnt umber alizarin crimson cadmium red yellow ochre SAP green ultramarine blue and ivory black and the canvas that I'm working on is an eleven by fourteen inch linen canvas toned with burnt umber oil paint and of course I let that dry over several days before starting this painting and if at any point in this video you are curious as to what brands I'm using and once what specific materials I'm using all of that information will be typed up for you in the description box of this video so if you want to know exactly what materials I'm using just go ahead and scroll down in the description box and it'll all be typed up for you so we're starting off with color this time and so we're mixing up basically a ground flesh tone or a basic flesh tone so we're using just cadmium red and burnt umber to start off with and neutralizing it and raising the value with the lead white now we've just dabbled into the yellow ochre to raise a little bit of the warmth of this color so now we're going to bring it down just a bit with a tiny touch of SAP green and I'm gonna apply a little bit of medium onto my brush and that medium is Neil McGill and again just go ahead and scroll down in the description box below and you'll see exactly what medium I'm using and so we're gonna start off in a very different fashion than any other painting video that I've done for you and the purpose of this demonstration is to show you that you don't have to follow any specific rules it's not the rules rather it's the principles that determine the outcome of the painting and so for the past few videos I've been creating transfer drawings and then transferring them under painting them and all that and the ones before that of course if you've seen my previous videos I would start off with a drawing color and then draw from there this time we're turning things over basically flipping it onto its head and starting off with a ground color as you notice and now we're going to go in with a drawing color so we're starting off the drawing instead of starting it off with the outside shape like we usually do we're starting off with the angle of the eyes so as you can tell we're just using burnt umber and painting right on top of that flesh tone that we made so that flesh tone is going to serve as a ground kind of like a local flesh tone that we're going to build on top of so right now we're establishing the most important angle for the portrait in my opinion the most important angle is the angle between the two eyes and this angle takes a while to to figure out sometimes it's a little too high sometimes it's a little too low in this case the angle is very very slight so she's almost not at an angle at all so what you're basically seeing is me trying to figure out the placement of the eye sockets just using that angle between the two eyes placing the two eyes and then I'm going to build from here and we're just using burnt umber oil paint so again we're going directly into color and we're drawing directly onto the canvas and I will say for compositions sake if you're concerned about the composition of your painting you really should do transfer drawing or some kind of preliminary drawing but in this case I'm working on a canvas that's a little bit larger than the canvas that I would want so this is an eleven by fourteen inch canvas that I'm drawing on and in fact I would want the final painting to be on a nine by twelve so if I place the head anywhere I don't want it to be placed I'll just take it off the stretchers Andry stretch it onto a nine by twelve stretcher bar nope so we're starting off again with the angle between the two eyes we've established where the two eyes are going to fit and now we are placing the bottom of the nose and the top of the hairline and here is our little caliper here so this distance here roughly equals that distance so those distance that eye distances that I pointed out to you aren't relationships and they thus are proportions remember a proportion is just a relation from one thing to another thing now then the angle between the eyes I could have placed that anywhere because one point in space can be anywhere in space and so it only then became where does the bottom of the nose fit in relation to the distance between the two eyes and so that is a relationship that needs to be understood and I'm pretty much doing that by eye right now but the forehead remember is a distance from the top of the forehead to the eyebrows is roughly one-third and the eyebrows to the nose is also roughly one-third and go ahead and measure that on your model or your photo reference or whatever you're working on before placing down the top of the forehead or the bottom of the nose and again I'm going to emphasize that it's really a matter of following the or following and understanding the principles and not necessarily the rules and of course I may sound like I'm going to contradict myself because I'm seen by many as a teacher and teachers oftentimes will follow one strict regiment you must do this you must do that and therefore your outcome will be exactly this and I'm turning that on its head because I'm trying to show you that you can follow the principles involved and let's just talk about the principles as I'm drawing these shapes in there basically the proportion of the distance of the bottom of the nose in relationship to the angle of the eyes is a proportion and therefore it is a a relationship between the eyes to the nose and a relationship from the nose to the forehead it's a those are relationships that you can categorize as the principles but the rules would have been do your preliminary drawing and figure out the outside shape and then place down specifically where you want things to go I'll be at going from general to specific I'm pretty much starting off specific and trying to get specificity very very early on and I encourage you to do this kind of thing sometimes if you've been painting for a while or if you're just trying to figure out how to paint just try a variety of different approaches you can try it whatever approach you want to so long as you follow the principles and don't worry I'll talk about the principles as I lay them down so another principle that we're going to talk about now as we're filling in the shadow shape is basically maintaining light and shadow and so light and shadow and proportion are going to be the two fundamental principles that we're going to figure out pretty early on in this painting so remember we started off with the angle of the eyes very different to two videos that I have created before just the angle of the eyes place the two eyes in their relative positions and then go ahead and place the bottom of the nose and the forehead now here's where the center line is going to be important because as you know the center line divides the two sides of the face in that center line is going to be important especially when you're trying to fit the nose in the relative relatively correct position so that's why I have these shapes very very simple but I'm trying to make them very specific and so the nose the shadow shape of the nose is also indicating to me where the center line is in a relationship to the model and at the same time now we're going to start to use a little bit of the lead white some of the yellow ochre and a tad bit of alizarin crimson and so yellow ochre and lead white is a pretty who can create a pretty strong and luminous yellow ish flesh tone but we just tinted it with a little bit of the alizarin crimson and alizarin crimson is a very good warm dark red for tinting you can tint your darks with alizarin crimson and you can also tint your lights and so now we're starting to put in some indications of the plains and so we figured out where we want the eyes to fit in a relationship to one another and now we're going in and describing the large and simple plain see this corner right here is the side of the eye socket and here we're just flattening out that shape kind of working from general to specific but we're trying to be as specific as we can as early as we can so that we can build a pretty much a faster painting in this way and again it's not a matter of the rolls but rather the principles and so we're starting off with a little combination of LED white and ivory black to create a nice pretty much a cool grey and we're using that for the sclera now I often times will tell you that this sclera is not white and that is not a rule that's a principle glare is usually not bright white even though I used it the principle that I'm talking about when I say the sclera is not white is the principle of tone the principle of value if the sclera was bright white that would mean it'd be the lightest thing on the value scale on your canvas and the what is the lightest thing when you're outside on a bright and sunny day the brightest thing is the Sun and is are the sclera is the sclera as bright as the Sun and no it's not is it really isn't and so it's a matter of value so value is going to be the next principle that we want to understand now the rule states figure out exactly where your light and shadow fits and then start to modulate the value now that's a really helpful way to create a painting and trust me I've made several paintings that way and it works just figuring out your light and shadow before putting in the tone but again I'm trying to show you that you don't have to follow one specific regiment to create a painting and so we're starting to indicate our value changes quite early on but we're making sure that the shapes are in the relative correct proportion in relation to one another and we're making sure that the principle of light and shadow is relatively correct and we're basically going and drawing in the irises with color we're just going in there with color and as long as these shapes are in their relative correct position and the values are relatively in the correct location we should start to develop an image very soon so now we're going in with a little bit of a darker value for the the junction between the upper eyelid and the eye and it's very hard to see on the photo reference I was actually kind of pretty far away from the model when I took this picture but that's alright it's very much about understanding what you're looking at rather than copying it and so these dark shapes here are a result to the relative position that do shapes are in in relation to the light notice this little corner right here is a little bit darker because the upper eyelid is rolling inwards towards the eye and thus it's turning away from the light source and now we just added a little much of our Academy imrad so we can get a little warmth of the little fleshiness in this area of the eye and now we're going to get a little bit of a cooler color just combining these two colors on the palette let's just add in a little bit of flesh tone just and neutralize it maybe let's make it a little more pink so we added a little bit more cadmium red to that mixture and let's just create this little dark accent down here so we're pretty much drawing with paint we're sculpting out the painting with paint and we're basing everything off of the eyes and already as you can tell the portrait is fitting a little bit too far to the right on the canvas for a conventional composition that's a little closer just centered Oh big mistake right not really because I do intend to cut the linen canvas off of the stretchers and put it onto a smaller canvas if I want to show this painting or anything like that and if I don't want to show this painting then I'll just leave it as is but it's also a pretty much a classical thing to resize or re-stretch your canvases just to change up the composition so don't worry the head is going to be a little closer to the right closer to my palate but the composition can be saved if I want to I can just put it on a different stretcher that's smaller and then just make the head a little bit more centered but in any case now you've just seen a little bit of the lighter planes that we've indicated remember a plane change is indicated by a value change and so this plane right here on the forehead is facing the light a little bit more than the area say to the left relative to your screen and so the colors that we used to make that lighter flesh tone we're nothing more than LED white yellow ochre and maybe a tad bit of the cadmium red and so we're painting the planes in relationship to our understanding of the form and again in principle the shapes that are lighter are most light facing meaning that the planes the angle between the planes are closer to perpendicular if you're at an area that's lighter and closer to parallel if you're in an area that's say in shadow and if you look at the angle of the cache shadow on the side of her eye so that is the eye to the left of your screen you can pretty much notice right away where the light source is coming from so that can also help guide your value gradation so now we're just softening some of the edges here with a little halftone so we're just going to soften this little edge right about here and I'm using round brushes I've been using around the brushes a little bit more frequently just because I can get a fine point with them and notice how I'm switching between brushes as well so I switched to this brush and this is kind of like my designated dark brush or my designated shadow brush now I'm painting in this dark concavity for the bottom of the eye socket got a little hairy there is facing the light a little bit less so it's a little bit darker and now we're going to use a little bit of a lighter more yellowish mixture to add a little bit a little glimpse of light that we see on the bottom of the lower eyelid just there and remember the highlights are the area's most perpendicular to the light source now let's just double-check the angle of the eyes the angle between the two eyes we really want to make sure that those angles are correct now the distance of the forehead and the distance from the eyebrows to the nose now look at this distance the distance between the eyes is usually equal to the length of one eye usually that's the case but just make sure to go and check your model trying to close up and make sure you can objectively make those measurements and if I went too fast I'll repeat myself the distance between the two eyes is roughly equal to the length of one eye usually now the model is turned a little bit so that may change a tiny bit but that's a general rule of thumb and now the other rule that I was talking about is that the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is roughly equal to the distance of the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose now we're starting to paint in that pretty much just a dark shapes on the bottom of the nose just trying to place them down again you have to start with something right and so we're combining a little bit of cadmium red and our lead white into this little puddle here and just painting in this little plane on the side of the cheek and again I should I should say if you have any concerns with using LED white you don't have to use LED white you can use something like titanium white zinc white gamblin makes a flake white replacement but the reason I use LED white is because it's a transparent white which allows me to use more of it but it also has a pretty heavy feel to it so it's almost like I can sculpt with the lead white now there are other transparent whites that you can use that are not LED white you can use something like zinc white or like I said gamblin has a flake white replacement and flake white is of course just another version of saying LED white so you don't have to use LED white if you don't want to now then we're making this shadow a little bit cooler we put a tad bit of ultramarine blue and some LED white into the shadow not too much white into the shadow but just a little bit to bring the cool of the ultramarine out so here we're just getting a little bit more ultramarine into this mixture and with color you can compare the color changes on the shadow in relation to the color changes and the light meaning that the the hue of the shadow in general leans closer to blue ish and the hue on the flesh tones leaned a little bit closer to maybe pinkish yellow ish so you can kind of determine what colors to start off with just by comparing the hues to one another and now we're going to get a little bit more warmth with this a little alizarin crimson and we're going to make it a little darker by epping into the darker mixtures on the pallet and now we're just trying to just kind of shape the side of the nose and at the same time create a halftone so we're trying to shape the size of the side of the nose and at the same time create a halftone and we're throwing in some alizarin crimson because remember alizarin is a very good tint err it's very good for tinting something making something red ish without making it too red now we're just going to take the paint that's on the brush basically and just create a little halftone here for the forehead now this flat shape that I painted in a value is a plane change and it should be fairly easy to see that it is a plane change and therefore it's getting darker and you can already see that it's starting to create a little bit of form on the little sliver of the forehead that we can see and we're going to just take that and apply it to the side plane of the cheek to the left of your screen so again we're trying to follow the form here as we're creating the painting now I have never made a painting video like this and I've hardly ever painted like this but I just thought it would be a good little experiment to focus on this little triangle basically the two eyes and then the bottom of the nose is the triangle that I'm talking about and trying to focus on this little area the best I can and then build the rest of the portrait based off of this here's another little plane change here for the side of the nose now this plane is very light facing meaning the angle of that plane is very close to being perpendicular to the light source and as we go further down the cyclomatic region that is as we get further down and closer to the cheekbones it's not as light facing but it's still pretty light facing in this area right here it's a little bit more pinkish so we're throwing in a little bit more of a pinkish tone to this little basically side plane of the eye to the right of your screen and now we're going to observe that there is a little light shape right about here on the top side of the tear duct of the eye to the right of your screen and sometimes it's easier to see things that need to be corrected when you have color into the mixture sometimes that makes it more difficult because you're focusing on color maybe too much and then things such as the outside shape of the eye socket may be forgotten or something like that in that case we're actually going to adjust the outside shape of the eye socket so we're just going to cut this corner a little closer inward trying to imagine the skull underneath of the shape just trying to make sure that that little angle between these shapes here follows somewhat the anatomy of the underlying anatomical structure there so now we're going to use a little vertical gesture to place the bottom nostril and just a little bit of ultramarine blue and burnt umber should do the trick for this and so we're just placing that shape in there and we're going to use the same combination that I just mentioned for the pupil of the pupils of both eyes and the top plane of this little area here just beneath the lower eyelid so again just ultramarine blue and burnt umber gives us a pupil so now we have the pupil to the right of the screen and now the pupil to the left of the screen and remember the iris is a pretty pretty much ultramarine blue ivory black and lead white not a very difficult mixture but I see that the shape of the left iris is a little strange so I'm going to go ahead and try to adjust that shape again I'm really trying to treat the paint as I would a pencil so imagine if this was my pencil drawing I'm pretty much treating it with the same level of specificity and observation so just a little bit of lead white and ultramarine blue gives us the highlight remember the highlight is the area that's most perpendicular to the light source so these little highlights right pretty much right on her pupil which means that the light is right onto her pupil which means that she's staring at light very closely now we have a little dark shape right here a little halftone for the bottom of the wing of the nose and now we're going to go in and place a little more light let's use a little vertical gesture right here and we see that there's a highlight right there so remember that plane on the nose is now we're now telling the viewer that that plane is most perpendicular to the light source again or thinking very three dimensionally as we are painting with value value pretty much is all about the understanding of the form in three dimensions and color is your understanding of the forms in relation to a given light source meaning that the light is fairly warm so the shadows are fairly cool and always the case but it's kind of the case in this painting last time we used natural light so the light was a little bit cooler the shadow was a little warmer so this one's a little different and now with a lighter flesh tone mixture remember the lighter flesh tone mixture was pretty much just the the lead white burnt umber cadmium red with a touch of yellow ochre and again with that mixture we're just adjusting the cast shadow making sure that it appears to the cast shadow appears to be casted by the nose here we just painted in the root of the nose all right so now you can definitely tell that the strategy is very different to the previous paintings that I have been making and this is the first really where I start off completely with the eyes and then figure everything else out based on the eyes but that's what we're doing we're changing the technique a little bit just to show you that it's not so much about following the rules and it's more about understanding the principles involved in painting and so now we're trying to work with the half tones and again the half tone region of the palettes pretty much just burnt umber yellow ochre a little bit of SAP green for the half tones and the light mixtures I explained before it pretty much just led white cadmium red burnt umber and a touch of yellow ochre is pretty much the majority that's pretty much the mixture for the majority of the colors and the flesh tone and we're just going to take from this little halftone region of the palette and just let the value drop a tiny bit as we roll away from the zygomatic region so as we roll away from the cheekbone so the plains of the cheekbone are facing the light a little more then the area's beneath them as we approach the mouse it does get a little darker as the plains start to turn away but not that much and so now we're going to observe the outside shape just beneath the cheekbone and so this little angle right here and so again it's about understanding the principles not necessarily following rules and so right now I'm trying to understand the principle of proportion for the mouth so I'm going to use this little relationship here so this shape from the eyebrow to the bottom of the eye is roughly the root of the nose to the middle of the mouth roughly speaking but nevertheless it's still a principle that is the principle of proportion and so now we're going to place in the little shape there and now we're going to double check that again this isn't a conventional measurement it's just something to get me started I was figuring out where these shapes need to fit in relation to one another and now we're going to use a vertical plumb line so the corner of the side of the pupil basically so a horizontal from the pupil down kind of gives us the corner of the mouth and the same thing with the other side again not always the case and in this case I think I kind of messed up I think it needs to go a little further to the right let's use a diagonal little diagonal from the nostril to the side of the mouth and again it's alright to make a mistake mistakes are alright just know how to keep track of the shapes that you're placing down and how to relate those shapes in relation and how to relate those shapes to one another and so now again we're just using again we're using the eyes to help us place everything else so now here we have two little bottom for the mouth and again my drawing color here is burnt umber so I'm just using burnt umber oil paint to figure out where to place the mouse and so now we're going to double check again with the t-square with our little magic t-square we're going to make sure that these points are matching up in relation to the model so let's double check this corner here that looks about right maybe a little further out here yeah just maybe a little further to the left so again it's basically like the saying measure twice cut once in this case I'll say maybe measure five times and then paint in the mouse just be sure that you know how to relate these shapes to one another and again I based it all on the eyes remember I use the distance from the eyebrow to the bottom of the eye to give me the root of the nose to the bottom of the mouth and then I used basically the pupils of the eyes to give me the corners of the mouth and even the angle of the mount itself though I didn't use any measurement for the angle of the mouse the angle of the mouse I'm still eyeballing it and relative to the angle of the eyes now you can see how everything is being constructed based on the eyes so now we're just painting a little halftone right here for the side of the the mouth the we're starting to create the orbicularis Oris fancy name for saying the structure encompassing the mouth meaning that this darker shape here is angling further away from the light remember any value change that you see is basically indicating a plane change in relation to the light and that is an angle change so the angle of the plane in relation to the angle of the light so now we're starting off with the dark of the lips and so we have just a simple combination of burnt umber and alizarin crimson for the dark of the mouth and alizarin crimson is a very nice color to use for sneaking warmth into your dark tone and so that's you'll find that I usually use a laser in crimson to sneak a tad bit of warmth into say the connection between the upper lip and the lower lip and even the side of the lip here there's quite a bit of alizarin crimson into this mixture again alizarin is a really nice tinting color it can tint something reddish without the strength of your cadmium red or your whichever bright red you're using and so now when you want that strength you can combine of course your cadmium red with your flesh tones which is what I did for this little shape that I'm painting in here this dark light as we're approaching the shadow of the mouth remember the dark light is the value in the light just as light turns into shadow and that's what we're painting right now and we're just trying to get a understanding of the forms as well as the color now the overall placement of the mouse remember that was the most important thing at at first in the beginning so the principle of proportion had to be understood to the best of our knowledge really and now we're basically using a very simple combination of our alizarin crimson mixed into the flesh tones that we had and as you notice I tend to mix a lot of colors on top of each other on the palate and so that helps me create on the palate a type of kind of harmony as opposed to just mixing all the puddles separately without letting them touch one another instead on the palate you can see that a lot of the colors kind of blend into one another and some regions of the palate such as the one I just took this a bit of paint off of are pretty much kept lighter in value so that I can reach out to them very quickly without having to mix every color uniquely with every single passage of paint and now we're just working on the edge between the the side of the mouth and the side plane of the orbicularis Oris remember the orbicularis Oris is just a fancy way of saying the structure that encompasses the mouth and now we're changing the hue a little bit and we're making the hue a little more green as we approach the bottom off the lower lip and then of course we just threw in a nice little dark warm red to contrast with the green that we're painting and right about here and for that I'm using a quite a bit of SAP green in these mixtures and then for the darker Reds I'm using quite a bit of alizarin crimson remember I usually tend to say alizarin crimson and SAP green are two colors that were basically made for each other so now there's a little lighter plane right here and we're kind of contrasting the hue a little bit we're throwing it closer to the greenish side and so just plain right here it's very similar to the color of the tone of the canvas so we're just going to adjust a little value here and create a little gradation of tone pretty much just taking a value right from the palette and now here it's a little bit warmer a little bit darker and a little bit closer to the yellowish side as we were adjusting the edge of the bottom side of this plane remember each value change that I paint is a change in the planes position relative to a light source with the exception of local values that may be darker than others so what's a local value so a local value is an area whom to which their local value is different than say the local value of another region so to make that more clear look at the local value of the mouth in relation to the local value of the flesh-toned so the value let's go into black and white for a second here the value of the mouth the local value meaning the average value of the flesh tones on the mouth are darker than the flesh tones basically in the skin now that's not always the case but in this case it is so let's go back into color so you can see that the value change in the mouth the overall average value should be a little bit darker so now it's a little vertical gesture here we're placing in a little dark shape for the accent on the corner of the side of the mouth now a little dark accent here and remember to sneak a little bit of warmth in between these dark accents between the the lips and again I like to use a lizard in crimson you can use a lizard permanent - or any other kind of transparent red to tint these darker values closer to the warmish side so that it was a warm side and so now we're filling in the bottom plane of the orbicularis Oris and now we're painting in the lighter planes for the bottom lip using our led whites and our cadmium red a little more cadmium red just a little more to bring some more warmth into on the bottom lip very small amounts of cadmium red into that mixture but just enough to get that warmth through and now we're using a little bit of a combination of ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson to get a little more of a velvety type kind of off purple-ish tone very much just manipulating the colors there I just wanted there to be a little bit more of a purple-ish color on the side now we're just again reworking that edge here so we want this edge to be fairly sharp but not overly sharp either so we're also considering the edge quality of each little shape that we're painting in here and now let's get a little more burnt umber and a tad bit of SAP green and a tiny bit of ultramarine blue mix right on top of this area of the palette and now we're going to see that there is the value right here on the bottom it's just a little bit darker remember that form encompassing the mouth the orbicularis Oris now we're going to look at the corner of the mouth to the middle of the mouth to the left and compare it to the right now remember the model is in 3/4 view so we're going to be seeing a little bit more of the models right side so the right side of her face we are going to be seeing a little more of that then the other side so let's use this measurement here top of the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose and now compare it from the bottom of the nose down to what chin should be notice the chin is just a little bit lower see that the chin is just a little bit lower that measurement we made and that's what you call specificity and that's how you gain specificity by relating each proportion to one another now let's look at the philtrum this little area here is the philtrum and compare it to the bottom of the lower lip just to kind of get a relation but this point that we placed in there is a very important point and it again relates to proportion again we're following the principles here not so much the rules so the proportion is really what counts in terms of placing the shapes in the relative correct position now we're going to pretty much eyeball the outside shape I'm very much looking at the distance between the corner of the mouth to the right of your screen relative to the outside shape of the face it's a very small distance since the model is in 3/4 view so now here we're just going to continue the outline of the chin there's a little definitive shape right about here so again we're just trying to check that center line and now we're going to just place a little angle right about here again double-checking the center line and now just a little angle change here you just want to make sure that that angle is just right now we're going to use the corner of the side of the nose we're relating that to the mouth and now we're going to see that the neck must be somewhere about here so we're kind of eyeballing it first now we're going to very definitively measure where that goes using a vertical plumb line so we're going to bring in our little magic t-square and so again the nostril must match up on a vertical in relation to the neck just based on our model that we're looking at and so after making that measurement I see that I'm not that far off but I think that that line needs to move a little closer to the left but only a tiny bit so we're just going to just move the line just a tiny bit and even so just making the line thicker so that the line matches up with a vertical in relation to the nostrils pretty much all we need and that's the kind of specificity that we really want to obtain especially with a portrait painting now let's use the halftone mixture this halftone is pretty much a very simple combination of burnt umber a yellow ochre and perhaps a little bit of the colors on the palette that is the colors that were used for the basic flesh tone which was remember cadmium red LED white and burnt umber with a touch of yellow ochre and the burnt umber and SAP green mixture to that and you pretty much have this color that I'm using to paint in these half tones so what I'm doing is I'm figuring out the boundary of the shadow shape that is the boundary between the light and shadow I'm trying to figure that out using the halftone now again you don't always have to do everything the same way for the past many videos I figured out the shadow shape using a line instead of a tone but this time I'm using a tone and more specifically I'm using a halftone that is already in the relative hue that I want for the actual flesh tone so again you do not have to follow any one specific way of working so long as you know the principles and the principle that we're working on right now is value and at the same time we're creating a boundary between light and shadow so now we just used a little bit of alizarin crimson and a tad bit of cadmium red some LED white and then some burnt umber all together on top of the make sure that was already on the pallet and now we're going to be painting in the lighter Plains right around this little corner so I perceive this area to be a little more pinkish so we're a little closer to as a pinkish side there so let's add a little bit more pink pretty much just taking of the colors that we used for the lips basically and just kind of blending them into the area of the chin here and so here and it's a little dark shape right about here we're going to have a little so remember this is following the central line just a little divot here a little bit of a darker shape again let's just think of these regions of color as just shapes now the shape here's a little bit darker as it approaches the bottom of the chin and therefore the lights is getting diminished as it rolls away from the light source so here we have a little more lead white into this mixture and again we're thinking about the angles of the planes in relation to the light source and we're also using a little bit more pinkish hue into these combinations so this area is still a little pinkish not terribly pink but a little pinkish and let's see let's use a little bit more so just mixing the same puddle again on the palate and just spreading the tone and we're creating the form of the chin with this mixture and we're kind of following the form just like you would with a graphite pencil trying to follow the form as you lay in the tones now we're going to switch to a different hue and a different value so we're going to be using a yellowish mixture so the lead white with the yellow ochre so I yellowish hue and a little bit lighter so the value is going to be a little bit lighter here because this area is a tad bit more light Tsing then the chin is and let's just soften the transition between these two shapes very light touch should do the trick now let's get into a little more of the lead white just lead white into that mixture that we already had and let's create a little highlight and now with a fairly used up I believe size for a filbert brush we're going to actually push the outside shape a little closer to the left I kind of messed up with the outside shape so I'm just going to push that shape a little bit further to the left I think that's where it should be but I'm not entirely sure but I'm going to guess that that shape was a little bit too far to the right of your screen again I could be wrong that's just how I perceive that that shape fits and it's kind of hard to objectively measure an outside shape but let's show you something that you can measure to give you the width of the head so let's use our little caliper here again so again let's suggest a caliper so the eyebrows to the chin okay so the eyebrows to the chin in relation to the width of the head is going to be a very useful relationship again not always the case but just look for relationships or patterns within the portrait so that you can gain a greater degree of accuracy so we used a height to width comparison so a height to width comparison is using a distance of the height that we are confident of that is the eyebrows to the bottom of the chin and again let's double check it so here is the height measurement right here and let's compare it to the width measurement right about here they're very close to being the same on the photo reference and I think that the width is a tiny bit greater so I just moved it with the brush a little bit further out to the left of your screen just a tiny little change there and now we're making a point for the ramus of the jaw so that is a little curve of the side of the jaw now we're connecting it to the bottom of the job on the skinning us a little mandible shape right here so we want to make sure that we have the mandible and the relative correct position and that little outline that we painted in there should be enough to describe pretty much the boundaries of the forms so now with a simple combination of our burnt umber ultramarine blue and a tad bit of LED white we're starting to mix onto the bottom region of the pallet and there there are a few warm colors in this mixture so there's a little bit of a lizard in there in this little mix remember alizarin is good there's a pretty good red ish tint color and so this area of the form shadow the form shadow of the side of the face is a little bit I want to say cooler in relation to the colors of the flesh in the light and so we're going to talk a little bit about the temperature of the shadow in relation to the temperature of the light so you can see there's quite a bit more influence from the ultramarine blue into this mixture but there's also burnt umber so ultramarine blue is pretty blue it's a pretty deep blue but it can be neutralized and darkened a little bit with burnt umber so often times having burnt umber and ultramarine blue and your palette is a very good way to go now usually I've been using raw umber instead of burnt umber and that's because I've been building my paintings with under paintings but usually if I'm going to work directly in this way I kind of use burnt umber a little bit more alright so now we've added a little bit of alizarin crimson or a little bit more alizarin crimson into the combination of colors so this is pretty much alizarin crimson combined with the ultramarine blue and the burnt umber so the alizarin crimson again makes it very nice and deep ish color and here's the thing so the shadow side is both warm and cool so there's a little conundrum right there what are you going to do if your colors are both warm and cool well of course let's just talk about the way that we're approaching it now so we're approaching it with direct painting so we're trying to get the color as quickly as possible so what I'm actually doing is I'm using a little bit of the tone of the canvas underneath so the tone is a little bit warmer so you see that I'm letting some of the warmth of the under or sorry some of the warmth of the tone of the canvas show through the shadow side and the cooler colors are being painted on while still leaving traces of the canvas you can kind of see on the bottom directly below where I'm painting here that I have left some of the canvas to show through and we're going to introduce a little bit of hue variation right on this side of the zygomatic region so this side of the cheekbone is in shadow and we're actually going to change the hue and make it a little more on the greenish side so we're using a little bit more SAP green and ultramarine blue into the mixtures right about here and now we're going to start to dapple into the dark light now remember the dark light is one of the most important values and the lights and it is the light just as light turns into shadow but in any case at this point we're trying to change the hue a little bit on the corner of the cheekbone that's in shadow and as we gradate towards the light notice we're starting to paint in a little bit of a warmer hue but the value is a very carefully thought out because the value has to be the darkest light within the light just as before light turns into shadow and that really describes the the journey that the values are making as the roll across I was a face in describe to form notice that we're adding a little bit of a warmer tone a warmer hue for the dark light there and now we're going to start to draw in the neck so the side of the neck so we're going to look at the relationship between the side of the face so that is the side of the face to the left of your screen and make sure that we draw the neck in as accurately as we can so again we're just looking at the angle so the relationship between the angles notice how I just use the brush there to kind of eyeball the angle now again remember we are building everything based on the eyes so again we're breaking some of the rules but we're still trying to follow the principles involved in portrait painting and again this is a demonstration to show that you can break some rules and still create a very convincing image so long as you follow the principle so now we're going to be again using the principle of proportion so we're relating shapes to one another remember a proportion is just a relation between shapes and so these shapes that were drawing in here notice how I'm just using this little dry bristle brush as an eraser these shapes here are being placed in relation to the shapes that we already established notice how we're using the brush here to create a diagonal so you can extend the one straight line across and see how it relates to your surrounding shape so this is much like say that I'm giving you a statement I give you three statements that are true now let's see if you can do some other three statements based off of those statements so that's what we're doing we're starting off with the statements that we had previously that is the angle of the eyes the proportion to the nose into the mouth and then the values and we're building the shapes of the neck on top of that now you can see a very simplified little shape here this little triangular looking shape and that shape is for the pretty much the side of the muscle of the neck so that is the sternocleidomastoid and this little corner right here is going to pretty much just be for the shoulder you could call it the trapezius muscle the neck muscle or you can just call it the shoulder so let's just call it the shoulder so this angle right here is going to have a specific relation to the side of the jaw so we're going to go ahead and look at that angle shortly but right now we're just eyeballing the proportion and we're going to draw a little bit of the outline of the shirt and now we're going to relate that side to the other side again we're going to relate these shapes using straight lines and angles so here we have a straight line for the other side of the shoulder and what I'm focusing on mostly is just making sure basically that the neck is not too long I just want to make sure that the neck is not too long it's very easy to make a neck too long so we're going to go ahead and move that line up a little bit and now we're going to use the dry bristle brush so we're just using that brush to erase a little bit thus moving the shoulder a little bit up because it did seem like it was too low now here we have a little bit of the outside shape of the cast shadow so this is the outside shape of the cast shadow that is the shadow being casted from the neck and now we're going to go and draw the little corner of the side of the hair now this is not really part of the neck but I'm just trying to look at these shapes as a whole and now let's make a little vertical gesture here and let's suppose that the clothing comes out to about there so now we're going to go into some of the color mixture that we're going to use for the neck and particularly the form shadow of the neck so we're going to start off with a cooler hue but the value it should be a little darker than the form shadow on the side of the face so we're using our ultramarine our burnt umber and the lead white and again the lead white is a very good transparent white that allows you to use more of it and it still has a very strong body so you really do feel like you're sculpting with paint when you're using the lead white but if you don't want to use LED white it's perfectly fine to use titanium white or any other type of whites so now we're starting off with a greenish mixture and it might be too saturated so that is it might be too bright of a green so we're gonna go into our ivory black and burnt umber to bring down the saturation of that green and so it's kind of working but I think we need a little bit more of the burnt umber ivory black mixture so let's go ahead and place that shape in there so this is the accent right here so the accent is going to be the conjunction between two forms so we're two forms meet you have an accent so the connection between the jaw and the neck will give you a dark accent and so now we're going to fill in this entire mass here with this color that we mixed up and then we're going to build on top of that color but for now the statement that I'm telling you is that the color of the form shadow on the neck so this area right here is cooler in relation to the form shadow of this side of the face so that is the statement that we're making and of course the value is also darker than the form shadow on the side of the face so now with a little soft sable brush we're going to subtract a little bit of the paint remember I was trying to let some of the under painting show through just to have a little bit of warmth and still maintain the cool temperature of the shadow tone mixtures so we're just trying to redefine the bottom of the jawbone here just making sure that that angle is as close to nature as we can possibly make it that is as close to the actual models neck as we possibly can and now it's a little more sap green into the mixture we're going to go further into the cooler tones so again kind of contrasting warm and cool flesh tone mixtures so this area we're going to perceive it to be a little bit closer to the greenish side so let's just go ahead and fill that in there again letting some of the tone of the canvas to show through and remember the canvas is toned with just burnt umber oil paint alright so now we're just distributing a little bit of the color onto the cast shadow on the neck just a little more of an earthy green over here let's use a little bit of the lead white just to make this a little bit cooler and a little bit lighter so there we go just a little more lead white into this mixture we're really trying to push the color change in this area but again we're going to not make it overly saturated it's easy to make the colors of the portrait overly saturated but it's not always so easy to relate the colors and maintain a harmonious neutral balance so now we're just making a little vertical gesture here and pushing that shape a little further to the right so that is it's always a little easier to over saturate flesh tones but it's not always as easy to relate harmonious neutrals to one another so again saturation is how bright something is like a stop sign is overly bright and red Apple is not as bright as a stop sign so again that's what saturation means and now we're going into the dark lights as we are moving in towards the light so right about here we're just painting in the little shape for the neck muscle so that is the sternocleidomastoid if you want to get specific with the name or you can just call it the muscle of the neck and we're making the hues a little bit warmer but still on the greenish side so we're using quite a bit of our SAP green into these mixtures again SAP green and alizarin crimson are pretty much colors that were made for each other and so here we're just going to make that shape a little bit more flat so we're painting it a little more opaque in this area I don't really want to let the tone of the canvas show through as much so we're making the passage into the light a little bit more opaque that is we're using more paint and just working these transitions so there's a lighter plane right about here and then as it approaches the neck muscle it's getting a little bit darker yet still in the shadow let's get a little bit of the mixture here that was already on the pallet so this is a warmer and lighter tone and let's just say that's going to be the beginning of the dark light for the neck and now you know at this point where the dark light is and if you don't again let's reiterate the dark light is the value in the light just as light approaches shadow it's the most important value when it comes to describing the curvature of the form that is the curve that you're making as you're approaching the light just adding in a little halftone right here for the pit of the neck you could also call this area the super sternal notch so that's kind of the little connection between your two collar bones or you can say your clavicles if you want to get more specific so let's get a little a little bit of yellow and Oguri mixture into this area here that might be too bright so let's go a little bit lower on the palate and just taking what's on the palate that's a little bit darker and a little bit warmer now we're starting to move our way from the shadows and you can already tell with these values that we've placed so that is the dark lights that we're painting in there the neck already starts to look like it's turning in space even though we still have yet to paint anything in the light side which is what we're going to be doing now so we're combining the red so the cadmium red our burnt umber or yellow ocher and of course our LED white and now we're going to start to add in some of the lights for the light region of the neck so these are the light most facing areas now on the photo reference this area looks pretty yellow and I would say that the photo reference might be pushing the saturation a little further than it would be in nature so we aren't going to be copying from the photograph we're going to be instead extrapolating the information that it's giving us which is that it's telling us that these planes are more light facing but the photograph may be wrong and telling us that it's that yellow in this area here where in fact it should be a little closer to a neutral yellow pinkish so again let's just take from the palette here so area right below the neck so this portion of the shoulder is still in light but it's not as light facing as the neck itself so that's another important plane change that we need to take into account so now it's a little more lead white and yellow ocher we're going to start to paint in that light that I was talking about so this plane right here it is much more light facing than the shoulder so again just making these plane changes as evident as I possibly can now let's take from the halftone region of the colors on the pallet and let's just clarify this edge right about here it's not quite as sharp so we just softened it just a little bit and now let's just take from a darker area of the pallet switching brushes here we're going to go back to the shadow so we're actually going to use a combination of color to adjust the edge so we're just making this edge a little bit softer as it approaches the neck and sharper as it approaches the chin to try to bring a little more focus towards the center of the face so that is we're sharpening the edges as you approach the center of the face to bring more focus to the face and let's shake let's just take a little bit more from the halftone region also palate and again let's just make this transition a little softer so the chin is approaching the shadow and so it's getting darker but we want that edge to be a little bit softer and this edge to be sharper we're right about here because it's the cast shadow and we want to pull focus towards the center of the face and let's just soft in this little transition here just by pretty much taking the colors we had on the pallet and just make this plane change between the neck and the shoulder evident but not quite as obvious so this is how we build the subtlety remember subtlety and value is just making the values as close as you can to one another yet still maintain their differentiation and so now we're going to establish the top of the forehead and we're going to follow the principle of proportion remember we're breaking rules but we're following the proportions so again the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose are roughly 1/3 and the top of the hairline to the eyebrows are roughly another third and again try and get as close as you can to your model that you're working with and make these observations as evident as possible make these decisions based on what you are observing and so with that being said we did move our initial mark a little bit higher up because we had the forehead a little bit too small and so now right about here we're going to be creating the boundary of the hair and again we're just using burnt umber oil paint as our drawing color here it may look kind of goofy now because we're trying to place in these shapes but it's alright we're just trying to relate each shape to one another following the principles of proportion value and color all right so let's make a mixture of lead white alongside the darker area of tone on the palate this combination is a little bit I want to say warmer and now we're going to make it even a little warmer with the alizarin crimson and this is going to be the cast shadow on the forehead and that is the shadow being casted by the hair and we're going to make it even a little warmer by throwing in some cadmium red into the mixture and now we're going to have a little bit of a warmer shadow on this area of the forehead and so we can compare the hues of the shadows now that there all placed so they hew on the cash shadow on the forehead on this area right here is warmer than say the hue on the form shadow on the side of the face but as we stated before the cast shadow on the shoulder is much greener in comparison the hue is much more green and so this is how you can compare your hues to one another and again we don't have to follow any rules here to make a presentable image now other schools would say paint in spots of color and relate each spot of color in relation to the others and we kind of broke that rule instead by focusing on each piece at a time studying them carefully then moving on to these surrounding pieces and studying them one at a time and now we're just moving that shadow tone a little bit further to the side plain of the forehead and now we're going to introduce a half tone or a lighter plane as we move away from the side plane of the forehead so here we are right about here we're also encouraging the frontal Ridge of the skull you can see it very clearly mapped out it's just a little triangle right here that's all it is just a little triangular shape of color nothing more complicated than that and with just a little more cadmium red and LED white into this mixture we're going to be gradating the tones even more remember a gradation just means a subtle change in tone so this is how we create subtle passages of value and thus create subtle passages of form so again it's a little lighter here as we approach the planes that are more perpendicular to the light source just creating the tones a little bit now let's take a little bit more of the cadmium red tiny bit more cadmium red and LED white notice that we're still mixing right on to the puddles that are already established out in the palette now it's a little more SAP green we're just neutralizing the warmth of the cadmium red and trying just to get the correct value so that is the values that's a little bit darker then say the values to the left of this passage but not as light as the value to the right of this passage of form and so we're just trying to build a gradation of tone here that kind of makes sense and that kind of follows the form so anatomically speaking we're painting in the plane for the frontal Ridge of the skull and you can kind of see it protruding a little further out so right about here there's going to be a shape of tone you can even see it in the photo reference that is a little bit darker and it creates kind of a triangular looking pattern and now it's a light almost feather like touch we're just going to soften these little edges right about here so at this point it's just about softening the edges and then pretty shortly we're going to get into the top of the head so now let's look at the say the tear ducts to the bottom of the chin so tear ducts to bottom of the chin is one distance and we're going to want to relate this distance to that of the top of the hair to the tear duct so remember proportion is all about relation and now we're going to be just drawing in the shape of the hair and so another rule that usually goes around is to use the largest brush possible for the job and I'm going to say that it's more important to understand and the information that you're putting down then it is to have a bigger brush or any kind of brush in particular and so we're using a very tiny brush here so this is a I think a size is a one round brush that we've been using here with our burnt umber and one thing you'll kind of notice is that we started off with the angle of the eyes which again I stated as one of the most important if not the most important angle to the entire portrait establish that very early on then figure it out where the eyes fit in relation to one another then we figured out the nose then we figured out the mouth so we're kind of working in the order of importance don't you think so now we've moved on to the hair and well the hair is important and I want to paint the hair as closely as I can to the hair the actual hair of the model but in the end of the day if all I really get right is the hair might not be a good day if you know what I mean so we're kind of we kind of also worked with the order of importance so making sure those eyes are in the right place the nose and the mouth and of course the jaw and the neck making sure that all of those shapes fit and now you can see we're kind of moving very quickly with the outline of the hair and now we're going to start to get into some more color combinations for blond hair and so I've received a lot of questions and suggestions of painting a model with blond hair and so the last time I painted a model was blonde haired there was a lot in shadow now there's a lot of shadow in this one too but you you can see a little more of the color or the blond color so now we're going to talk about color combinations for a blond hair now I see that the blond hair and usually has a lot of greens to it and that's usually the kind of the general principle or the general idea with blonde hair but we're going to add some kind of different combinations of color here so we you saw we just mixed up burnt umber white and yellow ochre I think burnt umber white and then yellow ochre makes a very nice yellow neutral yellow ish blonde hair color so to speak now you can see there's a little bit of greenish but there's still some yellow to these combinations and so we're just going to be painting in the hair pretty much segment by segment so we're gonna stick to this segment for a little while and so we're just adding in a little bit of the darker mixtures for this area now we're going back onto the palette just taking what's on the palette adding a little bit of SAP green into this mixture and just painting in a light plane right there just making the edge a little bit soft and darkening the tone in that region and again the color combinations are pretty much burnt umber white yellow ochre and here we're spreading a tone onto thee onto this area and the the color that we're painting on top of was the color we used earlier to just mass in that shape and again that color was burnt umber and now we're just introducing a little a some more cooler notes right about here and sharpening this edge on the side of the face just adding some more cool tones on this area so let's take some more lead white and just bring up the value right about here now you could paint individual strands of hair if you'd like to was a really tiny brush now I've done that a few before but in this case I'm just going to let the brushstroke suggest the individual strands of hair so here's another little light plane of hair you can see that I'm not really trying to copy too much specifics for the actual strands of hair rather I'm looking at the large shape of the hair and again I will say I probably shouldn't say this but in the end of the day if all I get right is the hair then that probably wasn't a good day so I'm just going to go in with a little more burnt umber and some ivory black and some alizarin crimson now I don't want you to get out of this that I don't care about painting here it may seem like that but I certainly do pay quite a bit of respect to painting hair and so you can even see that we're tinting in a little bit of a warmer dark into these darker values now alizarin crimson or a lizard permanent or whichever lizard you're using is a very good tint ER so it's very good for making something dark warm ish so that's why I chose to use a lizard to tint this dark so this dark color is pretty much just burnt umber every black tinted with alizarin crimson to give me this dark warm dark note and if I had used something like my cadmium red then that probably would have raised the value of the burnt umber and I didn't want that so that's why I used alizarin crimson which is a little more of a tinting color now we're just going to take white right from the palette again the color combination is very similar to that of burnt umber white and yellow ochre but it's also influenced with some of the flesh tips so again if you're painting a model with blonde hair you can also take some of the flesh tones right off your palette and those colors tend to fit in pretty well with the blonde hair and this area is a little greenish so we're taking some of the colors right from the palette to create that and we're thinking about these planes on the hair remember each value change indicates a plane change so that's the kind of strategy that we're applying to the hair just adding in a little darker note now we're going to add a lighter note right on top of it just to get the idea of the hair let's throw in some more yellow ochre and white some more yellow ochre and white and just get this light strand of the hair again remember Eve every single value change indicates a plane change not necessarily the color change but the value change alone will indicate the plane change a little more ultramarine into this mixture and we're going to just pinch this shape a little darker try to pull forward that little strand of hair that we painted and you can see how it's an abbreviation of the photo reference so we're not copying the photo reference to try to create the hair instead of we're kind of extrapolating information from it and a little more cadmium red just to raise the value and to create a little bit more warmth into this area of color so remember the primary mixture for the light of the hair is pretty much burnt umber LED white yellow ochre and we throw in some SAP green in there but that's the primary mixture for these colors and the areas that I want to appear more yellowish have more yellow ochre in them than the other areas nothing more complicated than that and you can already tell it's kind of starting to hopefully look like blonde hair and of course there are some influences of the flesh tones into these mixtures of color but nothing more complicated than that and again we're just pinching or raising up the value right about here because there's a very nice high lit strand of hair or a strand of hair that is in highlight should I say probably a patch of hair that's in highlight and we're making these edges pretty soft if you notice a very light touch with the hair especially closer to the hairline we really want those edges to be really soft now we're going to start to move into the shadow area of the side of the hair now you're seeing a little more burnt umber and SAP green and so to make sure and I just throw in a little bit of yellow ochre into that I'm gonna throw in some more SAP green and yellow ochre just to get more paint onto this mixture we want to load the brush with a little more paint and we're gonna use a little bit of Neil McGill into this mixture and again that is my medium so I use medium to thin out the paint especially when I want to cover a large passage such as this one and so the medium that you use whatever medium you use pretty much just use it to thin out the paint don't try to use the mineral spirits so much to thin out the paint instead of try to use a medium and again if you want to know exactly what medium I'm using I'm gonna have the name of that medium typed up in the description box for you and we just threw in a little more ultramarine blue into that area we're just trying to push the color change a little bit so this area is a little cooler closer to the blue ish side but not obviously not bright and blue either and a little more burnt umber into this mixture here pretty much just spreading the paint onto the surface and linen is a really nice surface to work on especially you're gonna work in this way because it's super absorbent it just takes the paint right away and now we're going to add a little bit of a more of a yellow ochre burnt umber ish color right about here and with the intention of painting over it with a lighter more yellowish mixture of paint now we're just adding some ivory black just to push this value change a little bit more so that's another thing you'll notice with blond hair that the darks tend to get really dark I mean not always the case but it is with this particular passage of value we're not painting straight black either so the ivory black is mixed with some of the burnt umber as well and so now as mentioned before we're going to go in with some of our lighter and more yellowish colors so again this is pretty much just burnt umber white yellow ochre and a touch of SAP green for these mixtures and that'll give you a very nice blond ish type of color for the hair so we painted in the the color but now we're going to just soften as you've seen we just softened the edge a little bit now we're going to soften it even further while placing in this darker shape you really want the edges as you approach the hairline to be really soft so let's add a little more light right about here this plane is facing the light a lot more think about it as a ribbon so this portion of the ribbon is receiving a lot of light and it gets a little darker as it turns away from that area and you're starring in some more Seth Green into the mixture and we're just going to raise the value on this area a little bit with the SAP green and the lead white and I'm painting in a kind of horizontal fashion just to eliminate the glare because the more paint you use it will create a little bit more glare especially if you use a lot of medium as I said I did use a little more medium into that area which then kind of creates a glare so I'm just trying to get the glare out of there by painting horizontally at times so now we're pushing the dark shape right about here so this area of the hair is a plane change and that is a plane change that's angling further away from the light and so it's darker and now as it approaches a light even more it's going to get lighter and so again we're working from that darker shape towards the lighter shapes and again using a combination it's no more complicated as you've seen on the pallet no more complicated than burnt umber white yellow ochre and SAP green and again if you want to know exactly what manufacturer or brand that I'm using for these oil paints that's all typed up for you in the description box below and we're just pushing the paint a little further down observing that this shape is a little bit darker so just making the shape darker as we roll across the form and it's a little bit lighter right about here remember I'm painting a little bit I'm making the brushstrokes in a horizontal fashion just because it helps me eliminate glare and the glare is not as evident on the camera but from my point of view as I'm painting it does create quite a glare now we're adding a touch more of the cadmium red Joe just a little more cadmium red to raise the value and to raise the warmth and so this area here is going to be quite a bit warmer so again not all areas within the blonde hair are going to be yellowish or greenish there are going to be areas that are warmer so that's when we use our cadmium red for those warmer and lighter areas and of course alizarin for those warmer and darker areas and the edge between the shadow side of the face and the hair we really want that edge to be soft as well so we're going to be softening that edge and that's to pull focus towards the center of the face notice the edge for the contour of the face and the light is painted sharper than the edge of the contour of the face in the shadow so that's a very intentional edge decision edge making decision there what's a little more ivory black we're just painting in a darker half tone right about here and so this this area of color in the hair is starting to get too close to the color and value of the neck so we're going to be kind of making it a little bit darker in these areas right about here that's why we're using these mixtures and let's pull in some little strands of hair so just taking right off the pallet painting in some lighter strands of hair notice how we're just pulling a little trand or a little patch of hair right about there now we're taking from the halftone to dark light ish region from the palate it's a little more ivory black into that mixture and we're just filling in this little patch of value and that patch of value is darker than the form shadow on the neck remember I said of that value needed to be a little darker so now we're making it darker and now we're taking from the halftone region of the palate pretty much just taking that same color and painting in the little strand of hair a little more SAP green and LED white mixed on to this little region of the palate we're just gonna pull some more strands of hair that are in the light nothing more complicated than that doesn't take much for the hair to appear like it's in space so long as you delineate the plane changes on them and make the edges relatively soft notice how I'm padding down and making the edges very soft and now we're going to get into some of our ultramarine blue and we added a little bit more white a little more LED white so ultramarine blue LED white and alizarin crimson so you might be able to see where I'm going with this color mixture so we're creating something that's kind of purple-ish which is going to be used for the background ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson and a little bit of ivory black just to bring down the intensity of the saturation of the ultramarine blue alizarin crimson mixture which is the very last thing I'm going to want to do to this painting is just fill in the color for the background and this video was primarily intended to show you that you can work and pretty much a variety of different methods and with that that just about concludes this week's portrait painting demonstration thank you so much for watching I really hope that these videos are helping you out and I'll see you next time

Channel: Yupari Artist

Views: 800,897

Keywords: Art, Oil Painting, Oil Painting tutorial, oil painting techniques, portrait painting, portrait painting tutorial, portrait painting demonstration, how to paint pictures of people, realistic oil painting, art videos, alla prima painting, traditional oil painting, flesh tones with oil paint, limited palette, portrait painting step by step, oil painting step by step, limited palette portrait, Yupari, Yupari Artist, yuparifineart

Id: 2wltLvLz8gI

Length: 97min 26sec (5846 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 06 2018