Category Archives for Student Critique

Acrylic Portrait Painting Contest

Why These Portraits Won the Contest

It is my privilege every week to judge entries for the Realistic Acrylic Portrait School Facebook Contest. 

The best 5-6 images get chosen to be included on the Header Image of our 6,000+ member group. But why do I choose the portraits that make it to the top?

In this brief video, I’ll go over the reasons why I awarded these portraits the prizes they received. I also discuss what could be done to improve them.

 

 

You can learn from these tips on what makes for a good portrait and how to improve your own.

Also, if you aren’t currently a member of the Realistic Acrylic Portrait School Facebook group (it’s free to join), you should be! Here’s why…

  1. Get help on your portrait from myself and fellow artists when you feel stuck.
  2. Share your artwork with others and get inspired to paint more, by seeing what your fellow artists are doing.
  3. Enter a portrait into the weekly contest, get your work featured, and win a prize!

 

Join the Realistic Acrylic Portrait School Facebook Group

 

See you inside the group! Let me know how these tips help, and of course, if you have any questions.

 

Yours for better portraits,

 

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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!

 

How Do You Do Layers With the Glazing Technique?

The glazing technique can do some amazing things for you, but it can be a challenge to learn how to do it at first.

I have a student named Holly, who has just started painting portraits in acrylic. She is currently working on one of her brother, and she was unsure of how to continue after beginning the glazing process. With her permission, I’m going to share her portrait with you. We all know what it feels like to get stuck during painting, especially when starting out…

Here’s her questions…
Hi Matt,
Thank you for your advice and the progress photos you sent of your artwork. That really helped. I’ve watched a lot of the student videos and I’m trying to apply everything to my painting. I feel like it looks kind of terrible so far so maybe I’m not doing it right. I’m worried about painting any more shadow in on his face because it looks bad – especially his eyes. I definitely feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Haha. I don’t know what to do about his hair or face. And the white shirt with the dark creases. And the brass jacket buttons. I’m following your list of paint colors to use for the skin tones off of your skin tone video and that is very helpful. But I just feel kind of lost as to the layering process. For instance, for the face, I don’t know how many layers of shadows I’m supposed to do before I move onto layers of midtones. And how many layers of midtones do I do before I move onto highlights? And when I’m painting the midtones, do I paint over the shadow areas as well? Or only paint on the midtone areas?
Thank you so much for your help!
Holly
Here is my answer to her questions, in a video format. I used Photoshop to show her digitally, how she would paint with an actual paintbrush. My goal was to create a roadmap she could follow to ease the confusion in the painting process and gain confidence for what to do next.

 

Let me know how this video helps! Does it clear up the process at all for beginning a portrait using the glazing technique? Let me know.
In the meantime, many blessings to you and your portrait painting.
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!

 

get realism with accurate shadows

How to Create A Realistic Portrait by Defining Your Shadows

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.

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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.


Learn How to Paint Acrylic Portraits With My Free Mini-Video Course!

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!
 
Yours for realistic acrylic portraits,

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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!