Portrait Painting Techniques in Watercolor Art--Professiona Tutorial
2014-04-29 18:18:35 Author:admin Source: Size of the characters:[big][middle][small]
Portrait Painting Techniques in Watercolor Art--Professiona Tutorial:
Watercolor painting is one of the oldest and arguably greatest techniques of painting, which has been becoming more and more popular. The upsurge in popularity is most assuredly owed, in no small part, to its versatility and simplicity, which give one an opportunity to experiment with the medium. Not only with materials on which the paint is applied, but also with the different styles and different themes.
To start painting anything in watercolor requires a little more planning and patience. Whether you are painting from a photograph or from daily life, it helps to establish your composition at the beginning. Knowing how much of your subject you will be painting will make things much easier down the road.
The following are 6 steps on portrait painting techniques in watercolor art:
Step No.1: Draw out the subject lightly in a hard pencil, such as a 4H. Pay enough attention to the dark and light shapes in the head and face rather than the finer details. You are going to be working from general to specific and the details will come later, so use a big round or flat brush, not a small rigger or liner for these washes.
Step No.2: Block in the darkest values first using dark washes. Avoid using black, but instead, combine Burnt Umber and dark blue for anything exceptionally dark. It helps to squint your eyes while looking at your subject to help isolate the dark values. Don’t worry that these washes are not dark as they could be; you will have a chance to darken them more later.
Helpful Tip: It is important to let each layer of washes dry completely before laying down any new wash that might come in contact with a previous wash. This is especially important when laying down light washes, as they can pull in dark pigment from an earlier wash and become muddy. (Portrait Painting Techniques in Watercolor Art--Professiona Tutorial)
Step No.3: Using lighter washes, block in the lighter values of the face, leaving the lightest areas untouched. Avoid oversaturated colors by using plenty of water in your washes, and tone down your warm washes with a tiny bit of a cool pigment, such as a dark blue, to keep them from becoming too intense.
Helpful TIP: You can “pull up” any areas that may have gotten too dark by using a clean wet brush. Dab the brush against the dark area once it has dried to push and pick up any excess pigment, or to blend a new wash with a previous one without leaving a line or “tide mark.”
Step No.4: After laying down your lighter washes, it’s easier to see where your first washes can be darker. Using a higher ratio of pigment to water, go back and re-establish the darkest values; in this case the hair and glasses.
Step No.5: For hair, pay attention to where the highlights are located. You can often showcase these just by leaving a previous lighter wash visible while blocking in darker values. You don’t need to paint every strand; the value difference will show the viewer that the hair is shiny. Work into the details of the face with a smaller round brush.
(Pictured Above: Watercolor Portrait Painting painted by Jennifer Taylor)
Step No.6: Lay in washes for the background. The background wash can also serve to set off the highlights in a face, in this case the lower right, where the cheek had previously been hard to differentiate from the white background.(Refer to: craftsy.com)
Hope the above tutorial can be helpful for you to create beautiful watercolor portrait paintings.
Introduction of Watercolor Painting:
Watercolor painting (watercolour), is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle. The term "watercolor" refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork.
The traditional and most common support for watercolor paintings is paper; other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum or leather, fabric, wood, and canvas. Watercolors are usually transparent, and appear luminous because the pigments are laid down in a relatively pure form with few fillers obscuring the pigment colors. Watercolor can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white. In East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, often in monochrome black or browns. India, Ethiopia and other countries also have long traditions. Fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in China.
Watercolor paint consists of four principal ingredients:
pigments, natural or synthetic, mineral or organic; gum arabic as a binder to hold the pigment in suspension and fix the pigment to the painting surface; additives like glycerin, ox gall, honey, preservatives: to alter the viscosity, hiding, durability or color of the pigment and vehicle mixture; and solvent, the substance used to thin or dilute the paint for application and that evaporates when the paint hardens or dries.
The term "watermedia" refers to any painting medium that uses water as a solvent and that can be applied with a brush, pen or sprayer; this includes most inks, watercolors, temperas, gouaches and modern acrylic paints.
The term watercolor refers to paints that use water soluble, complex carbohydrates as a binder. Originally (16th to 18th centuries) watercolor binders were sugars and/or hide glues, but since the 19th century the preferred binder is natural gum arabic, with glycerin and/or honey as additives to improve plasticity and dissolvability of the binder, and with other chemicals added to improve product shelf life.
Bodycolor refers to paint that is opaque rather than transparent, usually opaque watercolor, which is also known as gouache. Modern acrylic paints are based on a completely different chemistry that uses water soluble acrylic resin as a binder.
Edited by Kevin from Xiamen Romandy Art Limited. Founded in 2001, Xiamen Romandy Art Co., Ltd. is one of the leading oil painting galleries engaged in the production of handmade oil paintings in China. Our high quality products and excellence in service have helped us to enjoy a high reputation among our clients. Look forward to hearing your kind inquiries.
