Home Forums Explore Subjects Portraiture Prepping to do street portraits for first time. Tips?

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  • #1556542
    ElviraWG
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        Hi all,
        I’m prepping to do street portraits for the first time ever, at my small town’s summer festival. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. I do have experience sketching from life and photos, but not usually finished portraits, and I’m pretty rusty – feeling shy about posting these on here at all lol.
        I’ve been practicing to speed up and got the bottom 2 rows doing to 15-20 min apiece. That’s how fast I’d like to do them, to be able to do quite a few in the 6 allotted hours, make it fun for customers, and get a maximum variety of portraits under my belt. So, of course within that time limit, they’ll need to be very loose.
        The other reason I want to keep them quick and sketchy is I’m not that great at exact likenesses and proportions – blocking in takes me a long time to get right. So this is a more forgiving approach.
        As you can see, though there’s some improvement from top left to bottom right, I’m struggling to achieve a balance of looseness, and of detail where it counts; especially if the subject is relatively ‘smooth’ and in a bland pose, like with the children. Older people and poses in profile seem a lot easier to capture quickly.
        Note – some images are personal, some from Wetcanvas, two from Youtube tutorials; the bearded man is from a Jeff Haines tutorial. Top row graphite, the rest vine charcoal, which I’ve decided is the best medium (that I’m already familiar with) for the job. (Yes I have fixative :))
        It’ll be a sunny day but we’ll in under my tent. I’m considering hanging a dark sheet on 1-2 walls of my tent to try to create some shadow areas on my subjects’ faces, but I don’t know how practical that will be to do. A head with no shadow areas or front lit seems a lot harder to do a good drawing of.
        Any comments would be welcome! I’m nervous I’m not quite ready for this, but it’s a casual festival in a small town – people will be nice, I’ll keep my pricing cheap, and altogether the stakes are fairly low. And you have to start somewhere!

        #1556722
        WFMartin
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            Sorry, but I don’t see any of the photos to which you are referring.

            wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
            https://williamfmartin.blogspot.com

            #1557031

            No images makes it impossible to comment on your drawing progress. I like the idea to have a dark backdrop for the sitters- it really makes the light/dark more visible.

            I have done many quick portrait sketches over the years. They were at various fairs and community events. We had a small group of artists and set up a comfortable folding chair for the sitters. Sometimes we were under cover- which was the best for keeping out of the heat.

            We asked the sitters to pose for about 20 minutes and they could buy them if the artist agreed. Head/shoulders is all I could manage in that time. I always used soft pastels because I love colour and they are good for quick block-in and I have fine contes for details. Most others used graphite or charcoal.

            It was the most challenging drawing I have ever done- but wow, what good practice! My skills improved so quickly- and I learned to have a thicker skin to ignore some interesting comments from on-lookers!

            I wish you luck and hope you post the images soon!

            bethany
            moderator in figures & portraits blogs: artbybethany life-presence
            website www.bethanyart.com
            My inspiration is art... because without art, we would just be stuck with reality. ~Daniel R. Lynch

            #1558458

            Doing quick portraits from life is a really good way to practice, you are forced to work as quickly and efficiently as you can with  subjects that can sometimes be difficult !

            I had a few threads here on Wet Canvas about my live portrait experiences… but they’ve gone now!

            You need to have a comfortable situation, with light and shade, chairs and easel. Use the medium and materials you are most comfortable with,  I found it difficult to find a combination of pencils and paper that I was really happy with,… and a way to finish off, I used to roll up the drawings with an elastic band and put them a freezer bag.

            Try to make it a relaxed and enjoyable experience for both, the more confident the drawing the better it will look.

            an example of my set up when I first started in the local mall

            Mac

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