How to Add the Finishing Touches to an Acrylic Portrait

How to Add the Finishing Touches to Acrylic

Finishing a portrait is challenging yet incredibly satisfying.

When you’re close to completing your acrylic portrait, the final touches can make all the difference. These finishing touches are where your painting truly comes to life, capturing light and shadow to give your subject depth and realism. In this tutorial, we’ll explore how to add those critical final highlights and nuances, using a mix of titanium white and warm colors to create a polished, professional look.

Setting the Stage for Final Highlights

Before diving into the highlights, it’s essential to prepare your palette. Start by adding a small amount of matte medium to your palette. This medium helps in achieving a smoother, more fluid consistency for your paint. Next, squeeze out some fresh titanium white—the key color for highlights. Mixing this white with matte medium will allow you to apply it more smoothly and blend it seamlessly into your existing colors.

Applying the Highlights

The first step in adding highlights is to identify the light source in your painting. In most portraits, the light source comes from above, which means the top of the head, forehead, nose, and cheeks will catch the most light. Using a round brush, pick up some titanium white mixed with matte medium and carefully apply it to these areas.

For instance, when adding highlights to a subject’s forehead, you may notice that the white appears too stark against the skin tone. To soften this, blend a small amount of Indian yellow and Pyrrole orange into the white. This combination introduces warmth to the highlight, making it look more natural and less harsh.

Blending for Nuance

Blending highlights into the existing skin tones can be challenging but is crucial for achieving a realistic effect. After applying the white highlights, take a small, soft brush and gently blend the edges into the surrounding colors. This step ensures that the highlights don’t appear as abrupt streaks but rather as soft transitions from light to shadow.

For example, after placing a highlight on a subject’s nose, you may need to blend it with a touch of Indian yellow to warm it up. This blending process creates a subtle nuance that makes the portrait appear more lifelike.

Enhancing Shadows for Depth

While highlights are essential for showing where the light hits, shadows play an equally important role in creating depth. To enhance the shadows in your portrait, use a darker mix of the existing skin tones. You can achieve this by adding a small amount of burnt umber or Payne’s gray to your palette.

When applying shadows, focus on areas like the underside of the chin, the sides of the nose, and the hollows of the cheeks. These are the places where the light naturally falls off, creating depth and dimension in your portrait. Remember, the goal is to enhance the existing shadows subtly, not to overpower the highlights.

Adding Highlights to Clothing and Accessories

The final step in finishing your acrylic portrait involves adding highlights to any clothing or accessories in the composition. Just like with the skin, use titanium white mixed with a bit of matte medium to create these highlights.

For example, if your subject is wearing glasses, a small highlight on the frames can make them pop. Similarly, adding a slight highlight to the fabric of the clothing can suggest texture and light interaction. Be sure to apply these highlights sparingly and blend them well, as too much can distract from the overall portrait.

Bringing It All Together

Adding the finishing touches to your acrylic portrait involves more than just a few dabs of white paint. It requires a thoughtful approach to blending, shading, and color selection. By carefully applying and blending your highlights, enhancing shadows, and paying attention to the finer details, you can bring your portrait to life with a professional polish.

These techniques will help you create portraits that not only capture the likeness of your subject but also convey a sense of light and space, making them truly stand out.

Read more about my additional resources, tutorials, to learn more and check out my free courses here. . Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced artist, there’s always something new to learn and apply to your paintings. Happy painting!

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this tutorial and watch the video. That means a lot to me. I hope you find it very helpful in your portrait painting.

Yours for Better 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!

3 Reasons to take the Acrylic Portrait Painting Challenge!

/ Contests and Challenges Encouraging Thoughts Events
/ By Matt Philleo

As I type this, we’re in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. You know that.

Every challenge presents opportunities. This is one of those occasions. Many of us have more time on our hands, so I decided to open up a portrait painting challenge!

Why not use this extra time to create something beautiful—an acrylic portrait we can be proud of. I want to give you three reasons why you should take the challenge…

You’ll have the opportunity to walk away with a fantastic acrylic painting you can be proud to show others.
You will sharpen your skills as a portrait painting artist that you can use for future portraits.
You will be able to encourage other artists in a sense of community, and that will help you feel connected in a time of isolation.

This challenge is FREE to join and I also plan on teaching you step-by-step, with video instruction, precisely how to paint the portrait.

Would you like to join me and many other artists on this challenge?

Great! Watch this video…

Then, sign up for the challenge below.

I’m interested in the challenge!

Look forward to seeing you in the challenge!

Matt

If you found this post helpful or encouraging, would you send it on ahead? Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much!

4 Ways on How to Tell Your Acrylic Portrait is Done

Master the signs of completion: Ensure your acrylic portrait is perfectly finished!

Is it time to “call it quits?” on your painting? How can you tell?

You don’t want to overdo it, but neither do you want to leave the portrait looking unfinished. You want to amaze people with that picture, give a great gift or get paid, and have the satisfaction of a job well done.

But how?

Here are 5 ways to know your painting is done. In this article, I’m going to use a little tough love, artist-to-artist. Ok with that? Alright, here we go…

1. You’re not adding any value to it.

If you’ve been working on a one-subject 16″ x 20″ portrait for say, 50 hours, it’s time to say enough is enough.

Test: get an “innocent bystander” (in my case, usually it’s my wife) to look at your painting from a distance of six feet away, and then come back into your studio a couple of hours later. If they can’t tell the difference, you’re done.

By continuing on, you’re not adding anything significant to the bottom line of the painting.

You’re not adding any value.

Nobody will notice the little details you’re adding if they don’t make an impact from six feet away. Most of the time, as artists, we fuss over some small portion of the painting that has us stumped. It’s like the kid who takes all his time on one question in the timed exam and then fails the test because he should have skipped the question, completed the rest of the test, and then come back and finish that one problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying details aren’t important. I love detail and it makes an acrylic portrait look fantastic. But if you’re struggling with one square inch of your painting, leave it alone and come back to it if you need to. But chances are, you don’t.

2. You’re making it worse.

Yes, it’s possible to make a painting worse, the more you work on it.

I’ve done that.

I’ve had some paintings where I should have left well enough alone. That little dimple on the persons’ face was so good, I thought I should make it perfect.

But then I messed it up. So I had to try to restore what I had before, and then leave it alone. Then I found myself messing up another area.

Pretty soon, I realized, the painting is done. Time to sign it!

3. You just hit the unforgiving end of a deadline.

If you are a professional or semi-professional artist, doing portraits on commission, you know what I’m talking about when I say you hit the end of a deadline. Or you might be doing it as a hobby, but you have an occasion, like a birthday or Christmas, that dictates the painting must be done and wrapped by a certain time.

You know that a portrait must get in the client’s hands today, or at the very least, you have to email a proof image for the client to approve. You put in as many hours as you can. You bring out the coffee and energy drinks if you have to (have you ever tried coffee with a couple of black tea bags thrown in?...that will keep you up!) and you pull an all-nighter if need be.

But eventually, you run out of hours, and you just have to call the painting done, out of necessity.

Young woman painting a portrait at her easel. (Image courtesy of Pexels.com)

This, by the way, is why I advocate the glazing technique. You can work your entire painting at once, and even if you feel like it is 80% done, oftentimes, it’s done enough to please the client.

If you’re like those artists who have a white canvas and work it like a drawing, from left to right, making everything detailed and finished section-by-section, then you’ll always have a white section of canvas that’s undone until the very end.

And there’s no way you can pass off that portrait as finished.

Now, that’s not to say we don’t strive for our best work. Don’t turn in a painting to a client that’s not representative of your style, that’s not finished well. But the 80%-100% level of completion in a painting is a very grey area, a very thin line. It’s where you may not be adding much value to the portrait.

There’s a saying: “your work will expand to fill the time you allot for it.”

That holds true with paintings as well. If you have a tight deadline to meet, if you value your reputation as an artist, you’ll find a way to get the artwork done.

Unless the client is able to give you some wiggle room on the deadline, better to turn in a painting that doesn’t look perfect to you, than say, “Sorry, it’s not done,” when they absolutely needed it by a certain time.

4. Your client approves the portrait.

Again, let’s say you are a professional artist and you email your client a proof image. They love it. They are ready to pay you.

Don’t you dare add one more drop of paint to that canvas! It’s done.

“But I just noticed an eyelash that’s missing,” you say. “I’ve got to paint it in there.”

No. Leave it. Your client approved this version of the painting, and if you add more paint, it’s a different version. When they come to pick it up, they might say, “it doesn’t look like the proof. Something’s different.”

Then you’d have to try and restore it to what it was. What a nightmare! You’d waste the client’s time, your time, and possibly even lose the commission.

Not worth the gamble.

They approve it=you’re done.

If you think the painting could be improved, save that sentiment for your next painting.

Now, with all these points, it’s good to remember that sometimes a painting is not done and needs more work. Some artists give up on a painting too early. Don’t do that. If you stick with a painting that’s causing you frustration, it will build your endurance as an artist, and you will be able to paint better the next time. It’s just like working out at a gym. Finish your reps, and you will be stronger the next week.

As an example of how to finish a painting successfully, here is a portrait I did not too long ago of a pastor, a memoriam portrait. It’s one of my favorites. I posted some videos of it in the past, but here I want to show you how I finish and sign it.

Let me know how this article helps! It’s been a while since I’ve last posted, but I hope to get back into the swing of things again!
If you have any questions or comments for me, please leave them below. May God bless you in your painting!

Yours for Better Portraits,

If you found this post helpful or encouraging, would you send it on ahead? Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much!

How to Paint an Acrylic Portrait You Can Be Proud Of

/ Encouraging Thoughts Online Painting Class
/ By Matt Philleo
/ 6 COMMENTS

What would it feel like for you to truly be able to paint a portrait in acrylic you could be proud of?

…to give as a high quality gift, display in a show, or to get a “thumbs up” and a good price for your artwork when you do a commission? How would it feel to not struggle with finding the right skin tone, or get the blending in the colors right? Or to be able to paint a person’s face and not have it look flat?

Imagine how it would feel to know how to mix the paint and control the brush..and get a realistic result…predictably.

Paint realistic acrylic portraits with artist Matt Philleo.

I’ve been painting portraits in acrylic for over 20 years, and started teaching out of my studio two years ago.

The next year I started teaching online when one of my email subscribers, in her mid-80’s, urged me to put a course together. We chatted on the phone and she asked me how much I would charge for an online painting class.

“How about $97?” I replied.

“I’ll mail you a check right away.”

Just like that, I had a paying student…I had to teach the class now!

I asked some other folks on my email list if they wanted in, and about 10 more students instantly enrolled. Since then, I’ve taught almost 100 students literally all over the world, and it’s been so enjoyable to see the progress they’ve made.

If you want to learn how to paint a portrait in acrylic that you’ll be proud of, then learning directly in a step-by-step video course is best way to cut through the fog, and achieve results fast.

That’s why I created an online course called “Paint Your First Amazing Acrylic Portrait.”

It’s a complete step by step video course, showing you exactly how to paint a portrait in acrylic, from the sketch to the finished, signed painting. All the lessons are online, available for you to watch at your own pace, 24/7.

Click here to learn more/ enroll

Judy, one of my students in this course, just started acrylic portrait painting a couple months ago. She was having some difficulty and felt stuck in her painting progress, so she emailed me asking for a critique. (You can request a personal critique, too, as a student of my course!)

Here’s what she emailed me after I sent her the interactive video critique…

“Hi Matt,

Thank you so much, that is so helpful. You said it so well when you talked about “being intimidated by the painting” that was exactly how I felt – a kind of stage fright, haha maybe “easel anxiety” anyway as I listened to your critique I just felt it unlock.

I feel excited about making those changes. I laughed when I saw that despite staring at the photo for hours and hours I never noticed a piece of his ear was missing in my painting.

Again thank you so much.

Cheers,

Judy

PS I will send you a photo of it when its finished.”

Then Judy finished that painting, utilizing the techniques in my course and some tips in my critique, and wrote me again:

“Hi Matt,

Here is my painting that I’ve been working on. I’m really thrilled with it and it will work with Maurice’s portrait.

I’ve been learning so much – how to fix a mistake, and how to wait patiently for paint to dry.

I made a mistake straight off by using a lead pencil instead of the one you recommended I use ( which was right there next to it). Bet I will never do that again! I’m really getting a feel for mixing glazes and I’m having so much fun.

Thank you so much you inspiring teacher!”

Cheers,

Judy

I love the beautiful husband/ wife portraits Judy did side by side. Not only has she enjoyed the painting process, but she has two paintings she’s proud to show. And she has only started painting.

You can do this too. You can save time, paint, and frustration. You can learn how to paint a lifelike portrait that you can confidently show others, by taking my course.

I’d love to have you as a student!

All the best,

P.S. It is the one-year anniversary since I created this course in April of ’17. If you are wanting to take the next step in painting, here’s your best opportunity. I truly believe if you take the course, your portraits will dramatically improve. Why? Because the techniques work, and that is what I have seen happen for several of my students. Hope you’ll be one of them!

Click here to learn more/ enroll

realistic acrylic monochromatic portrait