Realistic Acrylic Portrait School

Archive Monthly Archives: June 2018

A Better Way to Hold Your Reference Photo as You Paint

If you’re like me, printing off reference photos for painting a portrait is a major inconvenience.

You have to run to the photo developer and get them printed off, hoping they turn out ok, then tape them up next to your canvas, and struggle with them falling off. Or you try to print your own from your own computer and it costs you an arm and a leg in ink.

I got tired of it. 

I asked for a Kindle Fire for Christmas and got one. Photos look outstanding in it.

I knew I wanted to set it up next to my canvas, but how would I get it to stay there? I thought of attaching a wire to the ceiling but that sounded sketchy.

So I made my own contraption to hold it up out of cardboard. If said this before, but if wasn’t an artist, I’d be a “mad scientist” inventor like Doc Brown from Back to the Future! The thing I made to hold my Kindle worked great.

One of my students saw it in a video and said she was having “technology envy.” 🙂 She thought the idea was cool. So I figured, why not share this with my students?

I explain more about it and how it can help you in my video below…

Hope this helps in your painting endeavors. Would you like step by step instructions on how to build one for yourself? Here is a free video course that will show you how!

Enjoy!

All the best,

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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!

Paint acrylic portraits glazing technique

Acrylic Portrait–Initial Color Glazes

Transitioning from your sketch in an acrylic portrait can be difficult. 

In this video tutorial, I want to show you how to set the stage for a painting with luminosity, by using light glazes.

Glazes are simply mixtures of paint and clear medium (matte medium) and usually at least 50% medium to paint ratio. By building them up slowly, you can steer the portrait in the right direction, incrementally.

You will see how color is applied to the entire painting, and it starts coming alive, even if slowly.

It’s a different way to look at painting. I’ll show you how I do it in this video, using this recent 8″ x 10″ commissioned portrait as an example…

 

acrylic portrait painting glazing technique

The Video Tutorial…

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and have a blessed day,

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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!

learn acrylic portrait underpainting lesson

Block in Colors and Values for an Acrylic Portrait

What is the best way to start an acrylic portrait?

Do you just begin with a white canvas, and fully paint everything from left to right, as you would in a drawing?

That’s how I used to paint, until I learned the glazing technique. I would painstakingly render every detail, and move across the surface of the canvas. But I always had a lot of white canvas staring me in the face.

After learning the glazing technique, instead, I could begin to slowly develop the portrait, like an Polaroid photograph.

Psychologically, it felt less intimidating. And it was fun to watch the process of the painting methodically taking shape.

In this video tutorial today, I’m going to show you how I begin my painting–what colors I use, where I put them and why, using this 16″ x 20″ commissioned portrait of three children…

 

Hopefully, this may provide you with a different approach to acrylic portrait painting, especially if you’re used to simply covering your painting opaquely across the surface of the canvas.

Let me know how this tutorial helps!

Signature_200dpi_sm.jpg

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!