Portrait Class Begins

Welcome to the portrait class (started up at Maude Kerns 1/14 on Wednesday evening). Looks like we have a full house at 16 people signed up!

Announcement: Everyone is invited to my opening reception at the Springfield Museum.. There will be some portrait examples.

The outline for the class:

• Equipment and Set up


• Basics and Concepts of Painting


• Classical Academic Painting


• Direct (Alla Prima) Painting


• Demonstrations


• Working from live models


• Looking at Good Examples

I talked about two different ways of establishing your preliminary drawing: the Renaissance style and the Modern style. The Renaissance approach uses a moe or less complete drawing with very little white canvas showing. The modern approach is more sketchy leaving a lot of white canvas.

(The Renaissance Style)
Note that using this style the artist spends a significant amount of time developing the Grisaille(F r. "Grizz-eye: grey")I prefer Sienna to traditional grey but either is good. Traditionally it is a monochromatic underpainting (imprimatura) in grey or brown.

(The Modern Approach) This is a more limited (sketchy) drawing done with the brush
Using a #4 bristle filbert If possible.

We started by concentrating on drawing with the brush trying to create subtle, soft edged likeness. The drawing has to leave a lot of white canvas showing. I emphasized that we need to spend at least two weeks drawing and re-drawing until we master this idea. The drawing, when properly exectuted, has half-tones as well as the full range of values from zero to nine.

To get ready for painting you will need brushes and colors:

Use Graham paints
Use a limited palette

1. Ultramarine blue


2. Alizarin Crimson


3. Cadmium Red


4. Cadmium Red light and/or Cadmium Orange


5. Cadmium Yellow Medium


6. Burnt Sienna


7. Thalo Green


8. Yellow Ochre


9. Titanium White


10. Ivory Black

In this class we will learn how to combine the Renaissance and modern portrait painting techniques. The modern approach calls for spped and direct painting. The older Renaissance methods call for careful drawing and slow, indirect painting, often building up the portrait over time, using glazes. Both approaches and/or a combination of the two are taught in many academic settings today.

Preview of modern approach: We build a portrait in four steps:
Step1: the sketchy drawing shown before that positions the head and establishes relative distances for key features (this process is called "mapping").
Step2: indicating the darker areas of the drawing:

Step3: add color: Pay attention to warm and cool colors and keep values in mind when painting in color. Also get masses right first, not a focus on details:

Step4: Add halftones and detail eyes, nose, mouth, hair

Looking at Examples: What was just shown was a very quick, rapid fire demo. In actual practice, taking more time with each step, results are much more refined. How much "finish" to give a portrait depends on the painter's goal. We shall discuss this in future classes. Here is a "finished" portrait of an Italian soccer player completed using this 4-step method: