Portrait 32/100

Moving along with another portrait and another paint-over! Swipe to see process shots below and say goodbye to the Lilac-Breasted Roller. 

I've been enjoying starting with a 3-value block in for skin and for hair, and then I go to town on the details with whatever values and colors I think will bring the painting to a more finished state. But that 3-value block in is a great start--and from far away the painting looks about done!

Thank you to Anna Tria on the Museum by Sktchy app for the lovely reference photo. 6x6” oil paint on Gessobord.

Portraits 30-&31/100

 

I am going to turn many of my 100-portrait challenge pieces into tiny quickie sketches. I brought up two at the same time today. The idea was to fill in the faces with a dark, mid, and light tone, and then to add more correct dabs of color/value to make them match their references better.  Thank you to Bryce C Liston for the reference on the left and to Sarah Sedwick (Let's Face it 2025) for the reference on the right. 4x6” oil paint on paper.

Process photos below.

Portrait 29/100

I played with the reference photo in procreate, adding a semitransparent photo of flowers on top of the portrait. I erased out most of the flower photo that covered her face, leaving the flowers in the periphery. Thank you to "Mia :)" on the Museum app for the portrait reference. I added a few other colors to my regular lineup of 3 primaries and white. The visitors are veridian, cobalt violet, and burnt umber.  6x6” oil paint on Gessobord.

Here are some process shots (I painted on top of a previous still life painting):

Portrait 28/100

 

This is a common theme for me, because I see it a lot in my household. I used a limited palette of a red, yellow, blue, and white. This is my standard approach--it feels much simpler to me--but I should probably try out a split primary to see if I like that better.

I made a video of this one, so you can see an overview of the process. It's on my instagram page, here:

PROCESS VIDEO ON INSTAGRAM

Portrait 27/100

Interesting lighting in this one! I love how the light catches her left eye and makes it look so blue. The paint was actually a light gray on my palette, but somehow it looks blue in the painting. 

My strategy for painting the skin tones was to pick 3 tones--light, medium, and dark--and to use the color picker in procreate or chroma magic to find pretty colors for these tones in the reference. I then painted these tones very thinly (I don't use gamsol, so this was just a thin application of pure paint). I picked a mid brown for the hair and grays for the background. Basically, I wanted to cover the panel with thin paint so that the next step of refining the colors wouldn't seem so daunting, because the basic tone was already sort of correct. Another reason to cover the panel with paint is that it makes a thicker top layer nicer to lay down and not feel so dry. There is a downside to using straight paint--it can be dry! 

I'm still figuring out how I want my paint texture to be. I like how flowy paint is when you add a medium, but I wan't to avoid solvents, which are often in the medium. I like the feel of Gamblin's solvent free gel, but I noticed that if I don't apply it evenly with all my paint, the parts with the gel in it come out super shiny and the others are more dull. I will continue to experiment.

Thank you to Moon on the Museum by Sktchy app for the reference photo. 8x8” oil paint on mdf panel.

Portrait 26/100

 

I almost threw this one away after putting in hours of work. I knew that I didn’t like how the reference colors turned out in my paper printout of the photo, but I was working from the photo anyway. And you can see in the process shots how ugly brown the colors were in the beginning (second image). I decided to go back into my ipad and use that as my reference, instead. Much more vibrant!

The reference photo comes via the patreon of Bryce C. Liston (thank you to Bryce and model Magda). 

Portrait 25/100

One quarter of the way there! I overplayed the chroma on this one, which happens a lot. On the other hand, I used a limited palette, so the colors work well together, I think. Today’s palette: napthol red, Hansa yellow med, ultramarine blue, and warm white.

My strategy for this one was to identify 4 values on the face using an app (ChromaMagic):

 

Then I created four piles of color corresponding to each value. Each color was correct for only a small patch within the value, but I used it for the entire value anyway, filling the face with a value pattern.  After getting that simple pattern down, I went over it with more specific colors. Here is a process sequence:

Thank you to Olivia Dawes on the Museum by Sktchy app for the reference photo. 8x8” oil paint on gessoed heavy paper.