Portrait painting tips

In the year 2000, this author was the recipient of the American Society of Portrait Artists Foundation Scholarship. It is imperative that one find a comfortable space to paint in and if you have a sitter it is duly important that they are not only more comfortable than you, but that they stay comfortable for the duration of the sitting. One can paint from photos but it’s really much better to paint under the lights or diffused sunlight. I’ve known painters of 25 years, with no real life portrait painting behind their backs to paint portraits that are convincing yet lack the dynamic feeling one can get from real life. The idea is that once you learn how to paint portraits from life you can become a better copyist and exaggerate work from photos. There is a big difference in a painted drawing and a painting. I am here today to give tips on oil painted paintings, not painted drawings. Learning how to show light is one of the key ingredients aside from working briskly.

Again, once you get good at painting from life one can cheat a little and work from photos. Norman Rockwell did it, but he also had years of anatomical drawing classes to foster his representational art. Norman Rockwell had a gift for pictorial hyperbole, his characters were almost like caricatures. I will be giving tips on how to paint a bust/head under a warm halogen bulb from about 75 degrees above a person (from eye level) in a traditional, representational way. A quick tip on taking photos:

Have one camera on a tripod aimed directly at the sitter and one camera in your hand to take freestyle shots. Amuse your sitter by moving around and taking a couple of fake shots with the hand held camera. When your client relaxes that’s when you take a rapid succession of shots from the tripod camera. The idea here is to get the sitter when he or she is in a natural state. That’s why you want to trick the sitter. Another way to do this is to say that you are just testing your equipment. The client relaxes, you get a great shot of his or her essence. All of us have different ways of relaxing, capturing a relaxed look is imperative to a successful portrait. Even if the person you are painting is a CEO, it is still important to show grace.

Now that you have some preliminary warm up shots, offer your sitter a refreshing drink, sit or stand at eye level (or slightly below) and begin to mix your background color. I use 12 colors when I paint: naples yellow, yellow ochre, cad red