MTM Classroom - Portraits in Acrylic

[jocelynsart]

This is a read-only thread. The original thread may be found here.

Welcome to the
“Portraits”
MTM (Member-to-member) Classroom

You will find the classroom host list and guidelines here:
MTM Classroom Host List and Guidelines.

Portraits in acrylic are possible and this particular classroom segment will touch on my particular methods for doing one.

Note: I will not be doing a too extensive classroom as my schedule has changed and I no longer have my days off all week unfortunately, as was expected originally. So please bear with me if I have to miss a day or 2 in between posts :-)

I will be concentrating mainly on methods in order to use the acrylic paint, and not getting into discussing Portraits in general. I will try to lay out in stages I paint in, how I go about working up a portrait in acrylic.

Some brief background on me and acrylics: I've been using acrylics since grade 11 art, introduced to them by an instructor of our painting class. That was 27 years ago now. They have changed a lot since I first discovered them.
I have always been drawn to the human figure and particularly the face. My inborn desire has always been to paint representationally, mainly because my whole reason for painting a person's face was because elements of that face, the way light hit, etc., were visually thrilling to me. Therefore, I need to mentally and emotionally need to experience painting and capturing those elements in my work, bringing them across to myself as well as to any other viewers my portrait may end up with. My work tends to be muted in palette, as opposed to vibrant. I tend to lean towards more natural, earthy colours and avoid the synthetic colours or "man made" type colours in my paint tubes.

Please feel free to ask questions about anything, along the way.

For my 2 week classroom demo, I’ve chosen to work with a reference I shot about 3 yrs ago, of my children’s former babysitter. This was taken by a window, at her parents’ home. There is light and shadow, but not high, dramatic contrast, so we’ll be getting into mixing subtle skin tones here. Values will not have huge variances. This is a pretty simple portrait so will not take too long therefore is great for the classroom.

I have used a 9”x12” cotton canvas, which is prestretched and gessoed. I also toned in a warmish raw sienna/green/unbleached titanium mix so as not to be beginning on a white surface. I try to keep the surface tone a mid to light, and something that will also help keep my skin tones rich and also do some work itself, in the portrait. I find this helps give a richness to my pigments, once they are layed in on top, as well as causing the portrait to make blending easier and for the portrait to have harmony.

My reference: I will upload and replace this once I find my digital file. this is just a photo of my ref photo for now, so is not really great.

[jocelynsart]

1) First stage, is to draw her up. I begin by marking in a light head size, then curved lines through where the eyes, mouth and nose fall. I indicate the perspective very crudely, as well, so that I can avoid getting the angle of the face the viewer is seeing, wrong from the start. I then begin the drawing in the eye on our right area most often, for a portrait. I pay attention to distances of the major shapes and work towards detail, from there. That is why you will see little "geomentric" shapes on my portrait drawings. This is the major shadow shapes somewhat indicated. This helps map out the planes and the features accurately, in the drawing stage, so proportion and likeness will begin accurately. Much more of it happens in the initial painting stage however. I don’t use shading in this drawing as it needs to remain as clean as possible a surface. I then will blot back, with a soft eraser, excess pencil/charcoal. In this instance, I used a charcoal pencil.

[jocelynsart]

2) This stage is the under painting, to get in the value’s levels, mids, shadows, and lights. This way, I won’t be struggling with the colour stage, trying to get the values right at the same time as mixing and laying in my pigments. I use to begin with colour straight away, but 4-5 years ago, I began using an under painting and I found it organized my stages much better and my painting went more smoothly, without a lot of the chaotic struggling work of back and forth, in the colour stage. Letting your monochrome stage build your form, and values, means that the colour stage is way less work and I maintain much more control with it, free to work intuitively, blend with not much problem, etc. Plus, it adds richness and depth to my acrylics and avoids that flat colour “plastic” look if you will, that often is the complaint about the finished look of acrylics, when they are desired to be used in a more traditional manner, by the artist.

My Palette: titanium white
unbleached titanium
raw sienna
yellow ochre
burnt sienna
raw umber (use occasionally)
alizarin crimson
cadmium red light
cobalt blue
permanent green light
ultramarine blue

Underpainting mix: raw sienna
aliz crimson
ultr. mar. blue
perm. green

I will tend to use mainly a sepia-ish pigment, varying it slightly with blues or reds, depending on future needs of specific areas.

The way I lay in the pigment is by lightly rubbing, with my brush held at a slight angle, in consistent direction. This way, a soft and controlled gradation happens, allowing me to go from very lightly pigmented areas (very little pigment being applied) for my mids/lights, to more coverage (will sometimes introduce the blues into my mix) for drker mids/darkest dark areas. My paint stays the same semi wet consistency, it's the weight of applying it and the amount of pigment that gets layed down on the surface that controls my building of light/darkness of the areas.

[gaykir]

Thanks a million for taking this on!! I'm in....can't wait to watch what you do with the hair (my big stumbling block!)

[jocelynsart]

Very welcome :-)

Unfortunately, her particular hair, and it's colour, are not a good examples of huge challenges with hair but I'll try to go in to painting hair in general a bit more indepth when I reach that point here, and hope it'll help.

[noodle1]

I'm already impressed! Thank you for doing this, I haven't done portraits in quite a while but use to be all I did, I'm looking forward to reading and learning and honing some skills. Hoping as well to join in, there's one of my oldest grand daughter been wanting to do, this is a perfect time to do it.

Elaine

[edtree]

Hi Jocelyn,

You've chosen an excellent photo for the demo and it's already shaping up beautifully! Portraits are my biggest challenge so I am all ears and eyes. Thank you so much for leading this class!

Elizabeth

[jocelynsart]

YW.
I hope that this does benefit some, particularly those struggling with acrylics for portraits. Basically, I don't strictly want this to be a "set in stone" formula, more a presentation of a method that works for me, and one I continue to develop. Others may want to adopt some of this method, if not all of it, with their own confortabel methods.

My method, in a nutshell, is very light, controlled drybrushing or scumbling if you will, to achieve gradation of my pigments on the surface. This in turn creates visual blending of the areas, with some transparency happening, as well as eventually combining with more opaque strokes in the late stages. I use very little paint, it is fairly "dry" almost in consistency, and my surface is flat to the touch for the complete portrait. There is no hard pushing or tough physical effort to my "drybrush" method, it is very feathery and soft really.

What I may do, down the road in this thread, is try to get my daughter to do a little one min. video so the actual movement I do can be seen, which may help better than words.

I will update this later tonight and then not till Saturday

[Li'l Brown]

It all makes sense to me so far Jocelyn. The value of working on basic drawing skills is quite evident here.

I may not get to join in right now but I will be watching with great interest and referring back to this classroom in the future.

BTW, a video would be fantastic!

Jesslyn

[RPut]

Oh wow! As soon as school is out and our vacation week is over, I hope I have time to participate!!

[jocelynsart]

Yes, definitely, about the drawing skills. They have to be strongly in place, I truly feel, before going to the next stage of painting in representational portraits. There, to me, is no use developing painting skills before drawing skills are well developed and are second nature.
To be honest, this drawing worked very quickly for me and very accurately right away. Often, the issue I tend to notice after I've often already put lots of time into a drawing, is that my perspective is slightly off in my portrait. Now, I double check myself from the very beginning on that point.

[susme48]

Jocelyn, I am going to be haunting this thread...still working on the last portrait that I plan on doing for awhile!! But surely can use help! Thanks for doing this!!

Boy, am I good at changing perspectives half-way thru'!! This should really help!!

[biddlebeach]

drawing skills,, sigh,, I suck at drawing skills..

[jocelynsart]

Well, it's like anything, you just gotta keep at it :-)

[jocelynsart]

Underpainting Continued

3) In the under painting stage, I put out 4 colours on my palette (b. sienna, raw sienna, ultr. blue, aliz. crim.). Even though it’s pretty much monochromatic, I do vary that pigment of the monochrome layer a bit, when that first colour will need to eventually be leaning towards a certain colour, ie: the rosiness of the lips, cools in the shadows, the darks in the eyes, etc. Hence why I put out 4 colours. I do not allow myself to put out a light colour yet, for the under painting stage, although you can if that is more comfortable to you (it comes in the very next stage for me and also tends to enter the "opaque" arean if done). I also try to think ahead as to what will be going in that area later on, and that is why I do slightly vary my monochrome under painting in pigment. But, I do not paint in the "actual" colours here yet. I don’t vary far from my main monochrome, which tends to be somewhat of a sepia, either leaning towards ochres or reds. Where there will be darker darks, I use more pigment, where the area will be lighter, I use less pigment. I am using a ¼” wide bristle synthetic somewhat bouncy soft brush. I am using my paint semi wet, not drip wet, using a sort of drop down method for edges and a more “rub on” method for mass areas small and large. I rub back and forth, almost in a staining way, as opposed to one direction lay in, with my brush. Keeping the paint semi wet, sort of sticky consistency, allows me to cover an area evenly in a soft rubbed in blend that is semi transparent to opaque, the amount layed in depending on if it is to be a light, mid or darker area. The tone underneath helps keep the blend nice and visually soft, especially where I end the stroke. I try not to end off in hard edges but in gradual gradation, at the end of my massed in areas. This is done by the amount of pigment coming to its end on my brush, and planning where to end off accordingly, as well as controlling the weight of my strokes. Less pressure for lighter areas and more pressure, and pigment subsequently, for darker areas.

The way I build up the form, is by using very little amount of pigment on my brush, and I rub lightly, back and forth, almost similar to sketching to build form. I always dab off my pigment on a paper towel pad beside me, before touching the brush to the canvas.

Notes: I use very little, to no water. What will eventually happen though is that with just acrylic, then picking up the blending fluid to mix with your colour, after a few times your paint can become too dry and almost gummy. You want a bit of drag and resistance in order to have drybrush work, but you don't want no pigment being put down or inconsistent small globs then bare spots, then globs again either. This is where I'll quickly dip the tip of my brush just in the top of the water, and I'll dab it off on the paper towel getting the paint consistency a bit sleeker again. I never want wet or especially dripping pigment on my brush. This does not work with my soft drybrush layer method.

The white is Golden Acrylic Glazing Medium (glossy) -it really is not making a glossy or shiney surface however, to my dried paint, which I don't want anyway. I prefer matte to slight satin finishes.