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Author: djstar, Contributing Editor
| I live near the Scottsdale Artist's School here in Arizona, which has proven to be most useful for me. Most larger schools such as community colleges and art leagues have sessions without instruction available to students and drop-ins to sharpen up anatomy skills. At Scottsdale, we are lucky to have two portrait sessions,one long pose life drawing and one short pose session, each three hours long, weekly! I have attended them regularly for over the past three years. I am a bit of a stubborn sort, who does not take criticism well, so it has been a great way for me not to feel intimidated as I work my way through my media and concentrate on areas that I feel need further help. I set my own goals and lessons and challenge myself. This seems to work for me. |
| I feel I am still struggling blindly, but fellow artist, Sandra Fletcher here at WetCanvas!, has encouraged me to share some of the things I have picked up along the way by writing this article demonstrating the steps I take to create my work and share some techniques I enjoy. I hope you enjoy and will find some tips or ideas useful to your work. |
| This is a canvas on which I have mixed acrylic paint into the acrylic primer to give a light middle tonal value. I began with a nice Wedgewood sort of blue, but had a disaster, so I wiped the whole picture off with turpenoid and left the stain a caput mortum, or light grayed violet. I then diluted Burnt Umber to make a wash and sketched directly onto the canvas with a #4 filbert. With limited time, I try to draw with my brush and I use it like charcoal, wiping with a turped rag if it is too dark or in the wrong place and smudging areas to see shapes. The goal is not to be perfect, it is to lay in the areas of the picture and just make a framework. |  |
 | When I think I am going to like the shape, I use less turp and pull more of the tube color in. This was a very dim lit pose, with a deep blue uniform, black hair and large dark areas. Since poses go 20 minutes, I try to get all of the Umber done in the first pose (this gives me time to mix my colors during the break) so I scrubbed in a lot of the darkest darks, mostly just to have a dark and middle value guide to work into. The lights were going to reinforce the shapes in background because it is mostly viewed from the shadow side so as I designed, I kept in mind I would be working color in my darkest areas. I have to think how to keep them vibrant, even in the shadows and key them lower, but for right now, I sketch just dark and light shapes. Again, it looks rotten, but it is like an armature for a sculpture - just the skeleton. |
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| It was suggested I post the photo of my palette, but I usually make a huge mess, so here are the tubes, and you are on your own for the formulas! Umber is already there; I seem to have it usually puddled in the lower corner and around it I put my darks. I have Ultramarine Blue, which I mix into the Umber to make the darkest dark, and my two other blues are Cobalt and Cerulean, since I would need lots of variety with so much in the picture. Also, I use a purple that works to spice up skin tones and also mix with Umber for a dark. My green, which I never seem to skip is Sap Green. It works well, like Cerulean to gray skin tones. Two or three dolops of Permalba white are also used because I forget to mix with my knife and by the end of the picture I usually have no clean white for the highlights as I dirty them up as I go. Umber and white are the biggest tubes! My warms are Cadmium Orange which never fails to make a pink cheek sing, Alizarin Crimson, and Cadmium red medium. Yellow Ocher was used for the bulk of the skin and a little Cadmium yellow for the zingers. When the model went on break, I put down my basic colors. |
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