Last week, I shared with you the beginning of my adventure on painting a huge 48″ x 72″ portrait.
Thank you so much for all your kind words and feedback on this project!
In that post, I mentioned how I tracked down the canvas, brought it back, and then created a layout for the portrait with Photoshop.
Today, I’m going to show you the sketching process, and with that, maybe spark a little controversy! 🙂
Controversy? How can sketching be controversial?
Well, there’s a huge debate in the artist community on tracing/ using projectors and whether or not it is cheating.
I’m going to show you the process I used and argue that it is not cheating. But I am open to discuss it.
First of all, I wondered with this big canvas, “should sketch on it using the grid method, or even freehand?” I’ve done hundreds of freehand sketches for portrait drawings and paintings, and in fact, it was the only way I ever drew anything from my childhood up until I started doing murals in 1999, when I was 22.
Then, through a contact I made while studying at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, I got in touch with Bob Jenny, a prolific and successful muralist from Ft. Lauderdale. We did several murals together, starting with two 6′ x 30′ murals in Womack Army Hospital in Fort Bragg, NC, and then a couple in Kenner Clinic in Fort Lee, VA.
Here are some images of those murals…
“You paint like an artist!” Bob chided me when he saw my technique. I used tiny brushes, piddling away on a large surface.
It would be like trying to paint your average 16″ x 20″ portrait using toothpicks.
Not only that, but I attempted to sketch out an expansive scene of the army medic serving in World War I & II in freehand on the hospital wall.
It looked good, but it was taking way, way too long. It wasn’t just a matter of it eating into our profits, but it was also the fact that there were many contractors working in the hospital, and the thing had to be done by a certain time.
So Bob showed me how to paint like a painter. He taught me how to use large brushes and even a roller to cover large areas quickly and effectively.
For setting up the sketch, Bob instructed me to use a projector. Some artists spend a fortune on snazzy art projectors that can project a regular photo print on the wall, but Bob used just an overhead projector–the kind that people used for teaching and media presentations, “back in the day” before PowerPoint became the thing.
You just make a transparency of your photo reference at your local copy shop and you’re ready to go. Or, you can buy transparency film that runs in your inkjet home printer and make your own.
Using the projector on a mural or large painting saves a ton of time. It’s very difficult and time consuming to get accurate proportions drawing freehand over a large surface. Your brain just can’t see the whole picture. So, I learned to use a projector while working with Bob, and it’s been great for quickly getting a sketch up on my canvas or panel.
Some artists feel like it’s cheating.
I don’t.
I see it as a tool. It’s the same way you would expect a carpenter to use a ruler, level, clamps, power saws, power sanders, nail-guns, etc. to get his job done quickly, reliably, and effectively.
But as an artist, you don’t want to use it all the time. It’s important to learn how to draw freehand as well. You can use a grid to start with. And then go completely freehand as you gain confidence. These drawing skills will translate into painting skills–because painting a realistic portrait is always fighting the internal battle of painting what you actually see, rather than what you think you see.
If you want to paint a portrait from a photo, and do it well, it will be a lot easier if you learn how to draw.
With this 48″ x 72″ portrait, the size is large enough that I decided to use a projector to accurately transfer my Photoshop design onto the canvas. I thought about using the grid system for a moment, but I decided it would take too long to set up all the grid lines, seal them in, and then try to mask them out at the end after doing the sketch.
The figures in the portrait just have too much detail for that to work, not to mention the background.
So I set up my projector. I use an Apollo Horizon 2, which I purchased for about $200 several years ago.
I printed off the design on my inkjet printer and then laid it flat on the surface of the projector.
Now, you will find that the lightweight plastic sheet will want to curl on you from the projector’s heat. So, if you put a piece of glass on the top (I tape the edges with masking tape, so it doesn’t cut me by accident) it will be enough to keep your transparency in place.
After that, I set up my canvas vertically against the wall. I have pretty small studio, but the room is long, so I faced it so I had room get the projection lined up straight on the canvas.
Next, I turned on the projector and lined it up. There were a few inches on either side that I couldn’t cover, but that would be easy enough to fill in later. Also, I needed to move that chair out of the way! 🙂
I used a sepia toned-colored pencil to do the tracing. I work from the left to the right, keeping my body from obscuring the projection.
You would think that tracing is just a mindless process, and so simple that a caveman could do it. But you have to discern what lines are important and what are excessive.
Why?
The projection will take the image and flatten it out. Background, foreground, subjects all become a jumbled mess of contours and details. You will lose discernment over what you’re actually tracing when you are close to the image. It’s good to hold a printed image of what you are tracing, or tape it up next to your canvas. That way, you’ll see the whole picture and if you can’t tell what it is that you are tracing, you’ll get a clue from your reference photo.
It’s good to fill in some of the shadow areas even while tracing, or you’ll have a tough time recognizing what the lines represent visually, when you shut your projector off.
It took me over an hour just to trace everything. And with that, my work only had just begun.
When you have a tracing done, you are not finished yet. Not by a long shot.
This is where your freehand drawing skills come into play. If you want an accurate sketch as a solid foundation for your portrait, you have to go back over the tracing and enhance it.
You may be able to pin-point where the eyes or mouth are on the face with the projected image, but you’ll have to actually draw their shapes in. You’ll need to take the jumbled lines representing the background and subjects and add detail to them. The projection just won’t do that for you. All it does is give you the overall composition and proportions.
You’ll also need to darken some of the lines, and leave other lines light.
That’s what I did with this picture. In addition to that, the client wanted some changes. I think I mentioned that in my previous post. He wanted he and his wife to look younger, and their sunglasses to be removed.
So, after I finished the tracing, I put in a couple hours changing their faces, using reference photos that the client supplied as a guide.
I also refined the details of their clothing, supplying the visual information that the projection left out. I went into the background, making sure I could identify what were the edges of hills, and what was just foliage within the hills.
I defined the edges and rock formations within the waterfall, because in the tracing, I could only make out just a couple angles and nothing more.
Finally, after about five hours or so, I’ve got the sketch finished!
Be blessed in your painting and creative ventures…
All the best,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
Recently, I was commissioned to do a 48″ x 72″ portrait by a man in Brunei (an island near China) of he and his wife hiking in New Zealand.
It was based off this photo.
It’s a beautiful scene, showing the couple winding their way up the scenic mountain ridge, with gorgeous hills and a misty waterfall in the background. I feel honored to be asked to capture this moment–and adventure–for them. This project ties up for the largest canvas painting I have ever done, and it will keep me busy for a while.
One of the challenges is to be able to find the 4′ x 6′ canvas for the painting. My local art store doesn’t carry any that big. But after doing some research, I found out Blick Art Materials in nearby Minneapolis carries them.
Although I have stretched canvases before, in this case, the cost for a high-quality 20 oz. pre-stretched canvas was only slightly more than what it would cost to stretch it myself. And I know there are purists who say you must stretch your own, but I would rather spend my time painting than stretching.
So off I went to hunt down a canvas.
I had never been to that store before. When I walked through it was love at first sight. I have only been to arts and crafts stores. But to be at a true art supply store, and especially one this size was amazing!
It didn’t take long to find my canvas.
Buying it was easy…
Getting it to fit in my SUV was a little more challenging! Would it fit?
Once I had it home, the next step was to prepare the design. The client didn’t want a straight-up reproduction of the photo he sent me.
First, he wanted he and his wife to look younger.
Second, he wanted the two of them to be much larger, more prominent within the image.
Third, he wanted the waterfall in the background to be larger.
This sounded like a job for Photoshop!
The first step was to cut out the figures, so I could resize them larger and insert them back into the image. That takes a little work! After that, I cut and pasted pieces of the background and stitched them together to cover over the areas left by my earlier incisions.
I felt it would be good to move the man and wife close together, and have them slightly overlapping to enhance the three-dimensional effect of one being slightly closer than the other.
Because the format of the photo is a different proportional ratio that the canvas I will be painting on, I had to add extra material to the top. But my client also wanted a larger waterfall.
So I took this picture and added it in…
And then cut and pasted pieces of the hill together. It’s a process of cutting, stretching, warping, sometimes even rotating the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to make them work.
Finally, I got a cohesive design, ready to paint from.
With the client’s approval, I am ready to begin the sketch. But that will be an adventure I’ll save for another day!
Be Blessed,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
To create a realistic portrait you need a lot of different elements all working together.
The main three elements are accurate form, value, and color.
All of these elements are tied together, and even overlap a bit. Today, I want to show how form and value work together, and how you need to represent value accurately to portray correct form.
One of my students recently asked to have his portrait critiqued, while in the sketch stage. As I was recording his critique, the idea of capturing value to portray a realistic likeness came up.
In other words, if you want the person you’re painting to look like them, you have to pay close attention to the shadows. It’s just as important to capture these shadows as it is to draw the features such as the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. with correct placement, proportions, and shape. The ability to see the shadows on a face is vitally important to create the illusion of three-dimensionality on the canvas. You need to be able to see the inherent shape of a shadow from your reference photo–its hard edge and soft edge.
On a photograph that can be hard to discern.
You have an almost unlimited array of values with micro-nuances that can make it very challenging to see the “big picture” of the main shapes of the shadows. But if you can train yourself to see those main, abstract shapes you will go a long way to being able to draw and paint realistically.
By the way, the edges are defined not only by shadows, but differences in value due to the actual value (light and dark) of the objects themselves. (For example, the contrast between the man’s flesh tone and white suit. Or, on a smaller level, the difference between his black beard on his dark brown skin.
There are borders to all the shadows and values Your job is to see the most obvious edge, pick a line, and define it.
Watch the video below and I’ll show you what I’m discussing here, using this student’s portrait sketch (supplied with his permission) as an example.
Mastering the ability to see shapes within the shadows takes practice. But it all starts with being aware of the need to do so. As you hone in this skill, you’ll see these shapes all over the place, learn how to paint what you see, and your portraits will come alive with realism!. Visit other free tutorial here.
Yours for realistic acrylic portraits,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
Painting the mouth, especially the teeth, in an acrylic portrait can be tricky.
It’s one of the hardest parts of the face to get right, but it is so important. Teeth are not easy to paint, because of the very subtle shapes, shades of color, and nuances you have to capture correctly to convey a convincing reality of a beautiful smile.
Today, I’m going to show you how to paint realistic teeth using my Old Master’s glazing technique.
1. Using a small round brush grab a little bit of napthol red off your palette…
2. Then a little bit of titanium white…
3. Mix into a warmer color like raw sienna, and dilute with a small amount of matte medium…
4. And then add the shadows just above the teeth, in the crevices between them, on top of the previously painted gums (that have just a light pink glaze on them)…
There’s a lot more! Watch it all here…
The 12-Minute Video Tutorial
(Instruction on painting teeth starts at 3:30 in the video)
And here is the completed portrait of my wife…
Hope you enjoyed this post, and have a blessed day,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
Today, I’d like to show you how I painted a montage portrait–several images put together into one design. This is one of my favorite portraits from several years ago, a 16″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas.
This was to be given as a gift from the mother to her son and his fiance as a unique wedding gift. The idea was to incorporate a large image of them, a picture of them with their dog, and then a scripture verse in the background, that would go with the marriage theme.
Here’s how I did it.
Step 1: The Sketch
After getting my photos together from the client, I did a layout.
This was before I started using the grid method, so I sketched it with a projector and pencil, following the outlines of the photographs closely. The projector sometimes gets things wrong, so you have to go back, double-check your lines and refine accordingly.
Step 2: The Foundation with Light Glazes
The purpose of this step is to quickly establish the tonality of the portrait by getting the colors in the right place. Secondarily, I want to set up my values, by creating immediate contrast between light and dark. I start attacking the darkest values first, using cooler colors like ultramarine blue, raw umber dark and dioxazine purple to create a rich, nuanced black.
This way, when it’s all done, and the viewer takes a close look at the painting, it won’t be flat. You will be able to sense the folds of fabric, and contours around the body of the person within.
My goal is always to create a painting that has immediate impact, but also rewards the viewer for taking a closer look.
For the subjects, I use raw umber dark for the darker values within the hair, raw sienna for the lighter values, and burnt sienna, raw sienna, raw umber dark, and alizarine crimson for the skin tones.
Of course, as with virtually all my painting, the pigment is mixed with a generous portion of matte medium to thin it out, and create the translucent depth that’s similar to the Old Master’s techniques.
Notice how for the trees and background I use a light green, made up of phthalo green, raw sienna, and a little indian yellow. It will give it a lot of luminosity as the light shines through the layers.
Step 3: Darkening the Deep and Mid-Tone Values
Now that I have the foundation, I go back and add several layers to all the areas within the painting. But mostly, I want to bring the darkest values to about 80% of their full strength. This will give me something to work with as I move the other values in the picture in accord.
I could just go and use full strength pigment, but it gives the painting a nicer finish to darken everything slowly. In addition to that, it gives me the ability to precisely blend even within the dark areas.
Is a black shirt just straight black?
No.
Not when there’s light shining on it. We don’t want to use straight black. Otherwise how can you paint the shadows in representing the beginning and end of arms, chest, waist, and all the appropriate wrinkles within the fabric? Instead we get it dark enough and leave room for the shadows.
And by the way, ivory black is not the darkest color you can get. You’ll get an even deeper black with dioxazine purple, aliazarine crimson, phthalo blue and raw umber dark mixed together.
Why not just settle for black? Well, it’s the same reason why HDTVs boast of having higher contrast. I used to sell LCD TVs years ago when they first came out on the market. They were terrible. The darkest values on the screen were just grey. Therefore the lightest values were not very impressive, and so the whole picture looked weak.
With a painting, you will get a way more dramatic effect if you can use really dark values to set of your lighter areas by contrast. It just reminds me of the way the darkness of sin makes the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ that much more glorious. You have to have some darkness to set off the light. Enough said.
Step 4: Adding Nuances to the Faces
At this point here, it’s time to turn my attention to the most important part of the portrait: the people. And especially their faces. In the previous step, I blocked in the darkest shadows within their faces, but now, I want to add some tie-in values. Those are the tones that bridge the gap between the lightest and darkest values.
So I keep the ones I put down as a good foundation. But now, I’m adding more on top, glazing over translucently, so the bottom layers still remain. That’s how we do this with acrylic–with layers.
I feel like their features–the important ones–like the eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth need some work. So I begin to darken them, adding detail wherever it needs it.
It’s good to remember the old adage, “Rome wasn’t built in day.” You have see the big picture and slowly comform your painting to the reference photos. Patience is key. For example, I darken the eyebrows as one solid mass of color–just one shade, but I know after this layer dries, I’ll come back to it again–and again, if need be. Then I will go in and darken just a portion of the eyebrow, while leaving the other part with whatever I did in the previous layer.
By doing this, I can suggest that the eyebrow hairs are thicker in a certain area, or the eye sockets are creating a shadow over that portion. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to get crazy with drawing each individual hair. That actually detracts from your realism. Just hint at it and let the viewer’s mind’s eye interpret the rest and create the reality for you.
Step 5: Building Up More Nuances Everywhere
In this step, I keep on adding layers to the faces: more layers of alizarine crimson, raw sienna, and some titanium white. Using a average size flat brush (3/8 or smaller) I keep adding nuances to the faces. When I start a portrait I use my largest brushes: typically 1″ or even larger. But as I get toward the end of the project I switch to smaller.
Why?
The smaller brush is good not only for detail work, but also those precise areas of nuances–the subtle transition of shading from the cheek to the area below the eye socket. Or the fleshy area under the chin and neck where the light is reflecting from another illuminated surface.
In this portrait, that is happening: we have the woman’s illuminated chest area reflecting as a secondary light source onto her chin. And so with that, I have to make sure I don’t paint the shadow underneath too dark. Since both the man and woman are outside, it makes sense that the light will really illuminate them well and the shadows won’t get very dark, except on the darker clothing and hair.
Another area I want to touch on is the Bible, which shows the scripture verse. That’s important part of the painting. I chose to just suggest the text by creating random out-of-focus lines. But the actual verse, “Love never fails” from the famous Corinthians 13 passage, is clearly in focus.
To paint something this detailed on canvas, you have to really make sure you have a nice detail brush, like 1/0 or smaller round, twisted to a point, with very fluid paint. Mist your palette and make sure the paint is about as thin as it can go before getting watery, and it will glide right over the canvas.
It makes painting text a whole lot easier.
Finally, I went over the greenery of the background trees and grass, just adding more nuances. I used phthalo blue, ultramarine blue, and raw sienna for the darker shades. Once you have your initial light green set up, it really sets it off beautifully.
In addition, I painted the dog’s eyes, using brown tones to give it some contrast. I still left the areas representing reflections quite light.
Step 6: Highlights and Advanced Blending
The portrait, at this stage, is starting to look done, but there’s still a lot of work to do. One of the things that can really enhance the realism is using highlights. Although I do like to leave a lot of areas of the canvas untouched for creating my lighter values, it is nice to go back in with some opaque highlights for certain areas.
I feel it gives me the best of both worlds: Glazing is fantastic for building depth and achieving fine gradations in shading, but it creates a roughness that must be overcome with some opaque layers. The trick is to use them just in a few areas.
The hair is one example. Here, I go back in and add just a little titanium white toned down with raw sienna to add the look of diffused light reflecting just at the top of the woman’s silky smooth, straight hair. I also go in and add some slightly darker highlights to the man’s textured short haircut. I already have the base color and value down. Now as I add these highlights, it will quickly change add depth to that area.
Also, I add detail to their teeth. We want to make sure that we don’t overdo it though. We want to use just enough of a light amber grey to suggest that there is separation between them. Raw umber dark mixed with titanium white and thinned by matte medium) is a fantastic way to create shadows for the teeth–in the right value and color.
Once I have the teeth darkened slightly, I can add even more depth by going over with a pin-point highlight of pure titanium white. With this, we just suggest reflections of light over the moist teeth. After it dries, add a tiny glaze of indian yellow, thinned with medium and it will give that white a bit more warmth and luminosity.
You can also do this on the gums. For some people, depending on the structure of their mouth, and the lighting, the gums will catch more of those highlights than the teeth. That was the case for this portrait.
Step 7: Adding the Details
Because this is a collage–or montage–portrait, there’s a lot different elements that need attention. So just when you think you are done, there’s just a little more.
Now, it’s time to add in some more detail to this couple’s background portrait. I noticed that the woman appeared to be looking away from the camera, but by adding just a few darker spots within her eyes on the right side, we suggest that she is looking toward us. It’s just a small amount of work, but it pays dividends in creating that visual connection with the viewer.
It’s time to add the long blades of grass in. I already have the base tones in. It’s just a matter of putting in some darker shadows in angular shapes, and then going over with highlights. Phthalo blue, ultramarine blue, raw sienna, even some yellow ochre and titanium white is what’s used, from darkest to lightest in capturing the effect.
Moving to the left of that, I tackle the jeans for both the man and woman, using the same two blues on my palette. I tend to use ultramarine blue for the darker values and phthalo blue for the lighter. For the darkest shadows I add in some diox purple and raw umber dark so it doesn’t get too bluish.
The Final Painting
With some more nuances here and there, I can call the painting done!
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it valuable. If you have any questions on the techniques used to create this portrait, I would love to help.
Have a blessed day,
P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!
