Portraits in Watercolor

I created this ebook in order to share the steps I take in painting a watercolor portrait. My way is not

unique, its really a combination of techniques I have discovered along the way that worked for me. Nor

is my way the only way, and I don't wish that you paint like me - what I wish is that you develop

your own style a style unique to you. Hopefully this little book can get you started.

Experiment. Practice. Study other portrait artists. Take what works for you. And one magical day you

will put it all together and your very own style will emerge!

I do not teach fundamental watercolor techniques here this book will benefit you the most if you

already have an understanding of basic watercolor techniques.

My Supplies

It is highly recommended that you use the best products you can afford to use. Painting a watercolor

portrait is challenging enough. Why give yourself more problems by using supplies that do not perform

well? That being said, here is a list of what I use when I paint portraits, in the order of importance I feel

them to be.

Paper I feel paper is the most vital item you use and you should purchase the best you can afford,

even it means you have to skimp on other supplies. The paper you paint on really is the biggest deal

breaker, in my opinion, between a successful portrait and one that doesn't turn out.

The paper I usually work with is Arches 140 lb. Cold Press.

Brushes Next up is the brushes you use. I have a squirrel mop for placing clean water washes, one or

two really good sable watercolor brushes for dropping in color, a couple of good round synthetic

brushes for eye work and details, and I have a synthetic flat that I use for lifting colors.

Paints I have listed paints after paper and brushes because I really do feel they are the least

important. You can paint a very good portrait using most any watercolor paint. Heck, I've even seen

wonderful portraits painted in coffee! I do suggest though that you buy the best you can afford. I like

Lukas Watercolors they are extremely good, nice vibrant colors, and they come in a much bigger tube

than most, which makes them a lot more economical. There are a few colors I get from DanielSmith,

too, that I really like. Here is a list of colors I usually use in a portrait, but I may add more here or

there:

DanielSmith Translucent Pyrrol Orange (I love this color. Its a very rich orange that leans way toward

red. I like to use it as a base in my flesh tones. It is PO71, and its also available as Schmincke

Translucent Orange and Blick has it in their brand as Transparent Orange)

Permanent Crimson

Quinacridone Gold

Ultramarine Blue

Primary Cyan

Indigo

Sometimes I also use Burnt Sienna

Step Number One: The Plan

The very first thing I do with every portrait is I PLAN! I can't stress how important this step is and how

greatly it increases your chances of a successful portrait. Within this step, there are lots of components.

Some of the things I consider are:

Inspiration What is my reason for painting this portrait? What strikes me most about the

person I am painting? What do I want most to express? You need to ask yourself these questions

because the answers are the thing you are aiming for when you start to paint these are the

things you want to accomplish and, how are you going to know if your portrait is complete

unless you know what you want to say. If you know what you want to say, then you'll know

when you've said it. Most of the time when a portrait is overworked, its because the artist did

not know what they wanted to say before they started. Maybe it is a look of despair that moves

you, or maybe joy, or maybe its something as simple as the play of light on a persons face.

Whatever your motivation, its important you recognize it at this stage.

Values Its important you go ahead and work out the values early on decide where your

lights and darks will be. A photo editing program is very helpful for this. You can posterize your

photo reference and get a better look at your values. Also remember, you don't have to stick to

the values in your photo reference. If you don't like the light and shadow, you are free to change

them. In the beginning, though, its much easier to go along with whats in front of you.

Colors This is also the time to choose the colors you will work with. Look closely at your

subject and see what colors you find in the face. Generally, I choose one flesh tone, and then I

add other colors as I go, like reds, yellows, blues. But I always know what colors I will be using

before I get started.

*TIP: One way to achieve color harmony in your portrait is to mix your own secondary colors

from the particular primary colors you are already using. In other words, lets say you are using

Alizaron Crimson and Ultramarine Blue in the flesh tones, and you need a violet for the

clothing. Rather than introducing another pigment, use your AC and UB to mix up a violet.

Supplies Decide what brushes you will need, what kind of paper you will use, and what other

supplies you will need.

Step Number Two: The Drawing

In a portrait, creating a likeness is vital. Its not the only thing, but it is important. And if your drawing

does not capture a likeness, no amount of painting or techniques is going to make it better. The likeness

must be obtained right here in the drawing stage. That being said, it does not matter what method you

use to get a drawing down. Whether you draw freehand, trace, use a grid no matter how you go about

getting your drawing down, whatever method helps you to achieve a good likeness is the best method

for you.

Don't let anyone make you feel guilty if you can't draw a portrait on your own right now. While I do

believe drawing is an important skill for an artist to learn, you can learn as you go along. And the only

reason I feel like learning to draw is important is because it frees you up a little bit more and makes you

a little more confident in your work.

If you'd like to study drawing a little more, I recommend you get a copy of The Natural Way to Draw

by Kimon Nicolaides. While it doesn't focus specifically on portraits, its still a very good way to loosen

up and by the time you finish the work in the book, you will be much more comfortable with drawing.

I also suggest you watch Janet Rogers' Portrait DVD she includes an excellent section about drawing.

Also, Jan Kuntz's book on Portraits - she has a great section about learning to draw the human head.

The method I used before I could draw was tracing. I would print out my photo reference, then go all

over the back of the paper with graphite, and then carefully lay the paper down on my watercolor

paper, tape it into place, and use a pen to go over all the important lines. Once the paper is removed,

you are left with a drawing on the watercolor paper. From there, you can fill any detail in you would

like to have.

Its important to take note of where your lightest lights will be and keep the lines very light in these

areas, and erase any lines you really don't have to have. Use a kneaded eraser for this.

Step Number Three: Preparation

Okay its time to paint! But before you start, you want everything ready. This is important. Once your

water is on your paper, the countdown starts and you don't want to have to stop to go find something

you need. It's also important to pick a time when you are least likely to be interrupted.

Some things you will want to make sure you have:

Paints you will use laid out on your palette I like to just squirt out my colors fresh for every

portrait. That way I start with clean, vibrant colors.

Brushes try to think ahead and have all the brushes you will require. Be sure you have a brush

for blending and one for lifting colors, too. A synthetic flat that has a good spring to it works

well.

Paper Towels and tissues

Container of clean water

Your drawing already taped to a board and ready to be painted on if you work on a smaller

size, you don't have to stretch the paper before hand. But if you go half sheet or larger, I would

stretch it and let it dry completely.

Try to think ahead as much as possible and think of anything you might need to do. For me, I go ahead

and get my little boy snacks within reach and get him some kind of activity going before I start. Just

getting ready as much as I can, thinking ahead, really helps - and also doing this every time before you

paint sets up a routine and tells your brain its time to be creative.

Step Number Four: Initial Washes

I work wet in wet, and then wet into dry. My method is to wet the paper, and then paint through the

various degrees of drying of the paper.

I always work on separate parts, but I still aim to keep the whole painting coherent and harmonic. In

other words, I will usually do the face first, then work on any clothing that will show, then the hair,

then the background. I do all these areas separately and I always make sure to dry the painting in

between and also to always get clean water, wash my brushes, and clean up my palette a little. This

keeps my colors clean.

The Flesh I lay down water where I will want the paint to be. I like to use the white of the

paper for my lightest light, and so I avoid that area with the water.

Now that my paper is wet in the places where I want paint, I first lay down a basic flesh tone. I

almost always use DanielSmith's Translucent Pyrrole Orange then I quickly drop in the other colors I

see in the places that I see them. If you happen to get paint in an area you don't want it to be, use your

tissue and clean it up. Now, because your paper is wet, the colors are going to flow together very softly

and smoothly, and the only places you are going to have hard edges are going to be where you left the

white of the paper for lights. And thats okay you want a hard edge where you are stating the light.

That is what tells you that this is light. So, now your paper is starting to dry some. As the paper goes

through this drying process, you will continue to put down the colors you see, and adjust the strength of

your paint as you go, so that by the time the paper has reached the point where you can't work with it

anymore, the paint you are using will be mixed with less and less water.

To avoid blossoms, always make sure there is less water on your brush than what is on the paper.

Always tap your brush lightly against your paper towel before laying it down on the paper. This will

blot off excess water.

Once the paper has reached the moist stage, you can continue with your darkest darks, but its very

important you don't go in with diluted mixes at this stage or you will end up with a mess. If you want

to add more of a diluted color, you will need to wait till the paper has dried completely and then rewet

and start again. If you are in a hurry, its perfectly alright to use a blowdryer to dry your paper quickly.

Okay, so you've got your basic wash of colors on the face and any other areas of flesh that are showing

if there are areas you need to adjust, like I said, dry the paper completely and then rewet the areas you

want to adjust and lay the paint down there. Its important you wet out beyond where you want to stop,

otherwise you will end up with hard lines where you don't want them. If the paint goes further than you

want it to be, just blot with your tissue. Make sure you are using a tissue that does not have prints you

don't want anything imprinted in your paint.

Now its time to add the darker spots of color lines, wrinkles in the face, dark ares in the nostrils,

between the lips, around the eyes, eyebrows. For these, I do wet on dry. I apply the paint, then go back

in with a clean damp brush and bleed the color out. Sometimes I leave hard edges it all depends on

the area I am working in and the effect I am after. For lines and wrinkles in the face, you can apply

clean water over the line first, if you like. This will make the line softer. Just experiment with it and see

what gives you the effect you are looking for.

The Eyes: This is where I work on the eyes. Its very important to go ahead and dry your

paper completely before you begin so you don't accidentally drop water onto damp paper and end up

with a blossom. It also makes it easier to stretch your arms over you paper and work on the eyes.

The way I work on eyes varies, depending on the color and the light. Usually, though, its

just a matter of wetting the iris, then laying the color of the iris, then quickly with a damp brush

withdrawing a little paint around the bottom part. I then let it dry and do the pupil and the area around

the lid. I do not use masking for the highlights in the eyes. I wait till its all dry and then use an xacto

knife to gently scrape out highlights.

The Lips: Again, make sure the paper is completely dry, then wet the area of the lips and

just beyond where your paint will actually stop, this way you have no hard lines. I drop in a little color,

then put some darker color around the edges where I see it, and as the paper dries I put in the darkest

darks of the lips. If the mouth is open, I will let the paper dry and paint that area wet into dry with a

dark value. Its best to avoid portraits with teeth showing, but if you must, just try to keep them as

natural looking as possible. One way to do that is to lay a very, very, light wash of color over them.

Clothing: Okay, now that the face and any other areas of flesh are complete, its time to start

any clothing that is showing. I usually try to keep the clothing simple so as not to detract from the face,

which should be the focal point in a portrait.

Again, I lay down a clean water wash, skipping any areas that I want my lightest lights to be. I then

drop in my first wash of color. Ad the paper dries, I put stronger values of color in the places where I

see darker values. I also withdraw paint where needed. Once the paper is completely dry again, I can go

back in with wet on dry and put down my darkest darks, softening lines where needed.

Hair: Once my paper has dried completely, I am ready to start the hair. Again, a clean water

wash goes on first, remembering to avoid areas where I want white to show. I then put down the colors

I see in the hair, starting with the lightest colors I see. My brushstrokes for hair are like an imaginary

comb, brushing the hair. As the paper dries, I go darker with my colors. I also make withdrawals where

needed and soften up around the edges. Once the paper is completely dry, I go back into hair wet into

dry for my darkest darks, remembering to soften edges where needed.

The best tip I ever got about rendering hair was just to approach it like any other subject and

concentrate on the shapes, values, and colors. Painting hair is a great time to remember to paint what

you see, not what you know. Don't try to make it look like hair. Just put down what you see.

BackGround: Again, waiting till the paper has completely dried, its now time to start the

background. Just like with the clothing, I like to keep the background simple, so as to not draw

attention away form the face. Sometimes I don't even put it in a background if I feel it will be too

distracting.

I do the background wet into dry. Basically, I just start putting down a pretty dark value of color

somewhere around the head, then bleeding that color off and away.

Also remember to try to use colors in your background that have either already been used in the face, or

use colors that are harmonious with the colors in the face. For example, I often use the colors from the

eyes in the background, too. Another example would be maybe you have used a lot of red in the face,

so a green in the background would work well, since green compliments red.

Step Number Five: Touchups

Once the paper is completely dry again, you can go back in and make little touch ups here and there

where you feel they are necessary. In this stage you will not prewet the paper, and your paint will be a

less diluted consistency. You can also use your xacto knife to gently scrape any unwanted paint away

from the lightest areas.

Step Number Six: Contemplation: I feel this is one of the most important steps in the painting

process and no painting is complete without it. Step back and look at your finished portrait. At this

point, there's not a whole lot of fixing you can do. What you see now is pretty much what you get, and

its important to remember when to stop. Like I said before, the reason many portraits are overworked is

because the artist did not know what they were aiming for in the beginning so they didn't know when or

if they had reached their goal. If you had a goal, now is the time to ask yourself if you have expressed

this ideal. If so, pat your self on the back, sign it, and go show it off! If not, then I want you to do three

things right now:

1 Find something in this painting you like very much. Something you can look at and say, I really

like how that turned out!' Take a marker and put a big circle around that something.

2 Look over the painting and find the areas you feel you could have done better in. Look for the

things you feel would have improved this painting, things you will remember to do better next time.

Make note of those things so you won't forget.

3 Pitch it! Either tear it into halves and use the back for scrap paper, or throw it in the garbage and

never look back! Not every painting will turn out the way you had envisioned. When they do, celebrate

them! But when they don't, simply learn from then and move on.

DEMO of Kate

I thought I would include a little demo of a portrait I recently finished. I do apologize for the quality of

the photos my camera is not the greatest and some of the photos came out a little blurry.

This first pic is the finished drawing taped to the board and ready for the first wash of color. As you can

see, the drawing is not elaborate at all. I have also chosen my colors and I have my supplies all ready.

The colors I have decided to use here are:

DanielSmith Translucent Pyrrol Orange

Quinacridone Gold

Permanent Alizarin Crimson

Primary Cyan

Here is the portrait with a first wash of color on the face. I have wet the face first with clean water

using a squirrel mop brush, avoiding the areas I have marked out for the white of the paper that will

represent my lightest light. I then dropped in colors with a round sable, starting with the Translucent

Pyrrol Orange first as my basic flesh color, and then dropping in Crimson and Quinacridone Gold

where I feel they need to be. Even though I did not drop any color into the lips yet, I did wet them with

clean water too so that I would not end up with a hard line where the color stopped.

In this next photo, you can see that as the paper began to dry I put a few darks here and there, around

the hairline, earlobes, eyes, nose and nostrils, top of the lip area, below the lips, under the neck and

around the shirt area. At this stage, make sure you have less water on your brush than what is on the

paper. Blot your brush a little before putting it onto the paper, too - this helps you to avoid blossoms.

In the next photo, I have completed the lips and the eyes: After letting the paper dry completely, I rewet

the area of the lips and slightly beyond them, then I applied a pretty dark line of Crimson through the

middle of the lips, and dropped in some on the bottom lip and the upper lip, then bled it away so that I

did not have any really hard lines. I darkened the Quin Gold under the lip, as well.

For the eyes, I wet the iris first, then with a synthetic round brush I dropped in the main color, a

mixture of Cyan and Quin Gold, immediately using a clean, damp round brush to withdraw a little of

the color. I then dropped in some of the Tr. Pyrrol Orange around the bottom of the irises. I mixed up

the orange and cyan to get a dark color for the pupils, dropped in orange and crimson into the corners,

around the eyes, and into the creases in the eyelids.

The eyebrows were done with my orange and cyan mixture, wet on dry. I first put some color where I

wanted them to be darkest, then cleaned the brush and softened the rest with water so that the eyebrows

fade as they move outward.

In this photo, you can also see that I have started on the hair by putting in a little bit of masking in the

hair area where I want some white highlights later.

Here the picture is a bit blurry, so you can't really see it well, but I have rewet the area at the top of the

nose, under the right eye, and around the left shoulder, and then spattered in some freckles using a flat

brush and the orange paint.

I have also darkened up the crimson on the left cheek and the nose, scratched out highlights in the eyes,

and put in my background. I put my background in before the hair because I did not want to paint

around those strands of hair later.

The background is very simple, just putting a line of the cyan around the face where I wanted it, then

using clean water to soften and bleed the color out to white.

And here is the final photo, after doing the hair, and removing the tape from around the portrait.

For the hair, I did it in stages. First wetting with clean water, dropping in some light colors, Crimson,

Quin Gold, Orange. Then, as the hair dried, I got darker with my colors, using mainly the Orange, and

a mixture of the Orange and Cyan, and also made some withdrawals of paint with a clean, damp flat

brush where I felt they were needed. The strands down the front of the face were done wet on dry, but

done while the rest of the hair was still damp so they would mingle nicely into it and not look separate.

And there you have it, the completed Portrait. Just needs a signature!

This was my first ever demo, so it probably could have been better, but hopefully I covered all the

important points.

A few final tips:

Practice, practice, practice that truly is the best way to improve your technique and develop

you style

Paint subjects that move you my best portraits have been the ones where I really felt some

kind of strong emotional connection with the subject

Try playing music that moves you while you paint

And I know this one is going to sound crazy, but try this little exercise sometime. Try painting

in really dim lighting. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I have a little boy and sometimes when

he naps I have to keep my lights down low, and I find that when I am painting in the dim light

things turn out especially nice. Maybe it somehow turns off the analytical side of the brain, or

maybe it just helps me to relax a little more, I don't know, but it does work sometimes.

Oh, and feel free to ignore that last bit of advice if you like!

If you enjoyed my little ebook, please pass it on to others who might like it as well!

Happy Portrait Painting!