Classic Portrait Painting in Oils: Keys to Mastering Diverse Skin Tones
Chris Saper
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 1440310610
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Discover a simple approach to capturing a world of beautiful skin tones
Chris Saper takes the mystery and guesswork out of portrait painting while leaving its joy fully intact. Continuing the exploration started in the her first book, Painting Beautiful Skin Tones with Color & Light, this sequel offers step-by-step demonstrations that cover an even wider range of ethnic groups and ages. You'll get professional advice on working from life, using reference photos, and combining the two approaches to create realistic likenesses that say something about the way you view an individual's unique beauty and character. Inside you'll find:
- A series of 14 step-by-step demonstrations of 7 diverse subjects painted from life and from photos that illustrate the advantages of each approach
- Techniques for seeing and recording accurate colors at live sittings, and retaining that accuracy when working from photographic references
- Tips on posing and lighting your subjects using both artificial and natural light sources
- Expert advice for shooting, selecting and working from reference photographs, including how to compose dynamic multiple-subject portraits
- Techniques for painting eyes, eyeglasses, mouths, wrinkles and other defining details
Though the demonstrations and examples are done in oils, Saper's techniques are universal. Regardless of your medium or skill level, the lessons inside will make painting skin colors easier, the process more enjoyable and your great results more predictable.
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follow the direction of the beard hair. Use medium to thin the paint if you’re getting the hair on too thick. Complete the Beard and Adjacent Shapes Take as much time and as many layers as you need to slowly build up the values in the beard to their lightest tone. Keep all of the beard’s edges soft against the shapes they touch. No matter how light Rick’s beard may appear in the lightest areas, no part of it is as light as his white shirt, which has a slightly yellow cast, consistent with
Bonnie’s delicate features. Continue to model the highlights on the hair using a mix of Transparent Earth Red + Yellow Ochre, applying the highlights one stroke at a time, again wiping your comb brush after every stroke. Lightly lay in the overall color of the shawl in light. EDIT YOUR COMMISSION WORK WITH CARE In this case, I made the judgment to change Bonnie’s earrings. Although they were fashionable at the time of the sitting, their trendiness will date the painting years in the future.
single stroke of lighter paint over the center of the lid and above the iris. Use the same light paint to describe the shape of the light and shadow pattern from the cheek all the way up into the sclera. Stop the light paint at the lower lash line. You’ll find that the sclera becomes automatically well defined and won’t need much more attention. Complete the Hair, Background and Highlights Keep the outer edges of the hair soft and integrated with the background by brushing the hair color
hours were up, so I signed the painting and took several photos of Melissa, including one that seemed similar to my viewpoint while painting her life study. Review the Life Study for Drawing Errors As I continued working on Melissa’s portrait from her photo, my goal was to improve the likeness without losing the fresh color I had seen in person. Using my reference, I decided to make corrections in the life study to agree with a slightly different angle apparent in the photo. The greatest
the size of the canvas and complexity of the subject(s) grow, you may want to make compositional adjustments once you see the overall drawing. Things that look right on a small thumbnail don’t always translate to a larger size—and if you are even the least bit uncomfortable with the placement, now is the time to change it. Separate Light From Shadow Use a medium to large synthetic flat to lightly block in areas of shadow. Although this canvas wasn’t toned in advance, the background will