Drawing for portraits in oil
In the second part of his new series, Paul TalbotGreaves stresses the importance of the initial drawing if you want to capture a likeness of your sitter and includes an exercise for you to try
In the second part of his new series, Paul Talbot-Greaves stresses the importance of the initial drawing if you want to capture a likeness of your sitter and includes an exercise for you to try
Portraits are certainly challenging and are one way of testing your drawing skills, especially when you are painting somebody famous or somebody you know, such as a friend or family member. The obvious overriding issue for drawing and painting a successful portrait is getting the likeness right, but it is not necessarily the application of paint that can scupper a painting, it is more the fear of doing it, which can lead to tight or unconfident work. Tight work often necessitates accuracy and if you paint a photorealistic interpretation of someone, any slight deviation from the truth will stand out as a glaring error. With that in mind, I prefer to paint quite loose and allow brushmarks to form the shapes, leaving room for the imagination to fill in the gaps.
Preparing for a painting
You will either be working from life or from a photograph, either way you need some distance between yourself and the subject, as well as distance between you and the painting. Allowing space to be able to stand back is hugely important as errors in shape and proportion don’t usually present themselves at close quarters. Make sure you have lighting that shows the shape of the face to avoid a flat or washed-out look. If you are working from photographs be very aware that shadows are often blackened, and if you work with that level of neutral you will kill the painting. My advice is to use a tablet or computer to view the subject as a photograph, because the screen will give a better rendition of colour and value than in a printed version. Make any preliminary assessment of the level of shade by lightening or darkening values or increasing colour saturation before you begin. This is easy to do on an iPad by selecting edit and using the sliders to adjust the light levels and so on.
The first objective is to get a structure established. If you are working in watercolour it is essential that your drawing is accurate because mistakes are difficult to correct, although the
inclusion of gouache can be a way of reforming edges or painting over slips and errors. There are several ways you can create a drawing for watercolour. If you want a fast track, use a projector, or trace the image onto your paper. Whilst this will give you accuracy, it won’t do much for improving your eye-to-hand coordination skills. A more studious way would be to use a pair of scale dividers to check the scale and proportion of facial features whilst still using freehand techniques. Watercolour is great for creating luminous skin tones, but the structure of a tight drawing can see you filling in shapes, which can result in a static feel. My preferred method for painting portraits is to use oil paint. With oil, the portrait can be sculpted, shaped, reshaped and altered as you wish. This means you don’t have to labour over your drawing, so long as the proportions are correct. One point I will make about creating a two-dimensional drawing is that you will no doubt attempt to generate a likeness within the line; this almost never happens because the face is three-dimensional and it’s only when you apply changes in values and shape that will you begin to recognise the person.
Proportions
Start with a guide to generate proportions for a face by dividing the height of the head shape into three sections. The top third line indicates the brow line, eyes are just underneath, the nose is roughly on the bottom third line and the mouth is just above halfway up this section. These are rough guidelines only for placing facial features. We are all unique, so you need to look carefully for slight deviations from this guide in your portrait. Start with a centre line from top to bottom and note that this will be tilted if the head is tilted. Next mark a line for the eyes at 90 degrees to the centre line, to make sure you paint them on the same plane. Eyes are around one-fifth of the head width, but don’t faithfully rely on this, as foreshortening can alter how those dimensions appear. I usually draw the rough proportions with a light charcoal pencil, making any necessary adjustments, then I begin blocking in the main shapes, colours, and values of the face. I find it is hugely beneficial to half-close my eyes at the subject to consolidate values and eliminate details. Once the rough work is blocked in, I can settle down to begin sculpting the shapes of the model’s face. Whether you use oil or watercolour, the action of painting is simply an extension of drawing.
Materials
I use Rosemary & Co’s Ivory flat brushes as they have a firm spring and they apply the oil paint in a beautifully controlled way. For my portrait colours I use alizarin crimson, cadmium red, yellow ochre, cobalt blue, and titanium
‘Make sure you have lighting that shows the shape of the face to avoid a flat or washed-out look’
white. With these colours I can switch between warm light, warm dark, cool light and cool dark colours as well as achieving a whole range of values.
Canvas or canvas paper has a lovely tooth for creating drag effects and it handles oil well. I usually start with a large flat brush, marking the darker elements of the face before building the mid and light values. The intention here is not to create a likeness but to roughly sculpt the shapes of the face. I try not to be overly careful and instead I screw up my eyes to consolidate values and details and this really helps with the roughing in. This is perhaps the hardest part of the painting because the temptation is to paint the face exactly as I see it, but this is negated by having the iPad at least three feet away so that I can’t make out any intricacies anyway. When the roughing is done, I work on the face, taking note of colour and value changes and constantly mixing them in the palette. Doing it this way creates more variety than making a large mix of colour to last through the entire painting.
‘The temptation is to paint the face exactly as I see it, but this is negated by having the iPad at least three feet away’