How to Draw and Paint Facial Features Part 2

It's all about the eyes and mixing flesh tones this week.

This a project I'm doing with the oil painting class I teach on Tuesday mornings at Forstall Art Center in Birmingham, AL. We are doing small studies of each facial feature. Eventually we will do a complete portrait with the skills gained by studying the features individually. Here's Part 1 in which I drew the eye.

In the last post, the painting was at this stage.  My disclaimer here is that this is just what I do. There are many different methods out there but this is what I have developed over the years. It works for me.

I am constantly trying new things but for now this is my go-to starting place. I develop 4 basic flesh tones. Having a method helps me and seems to help my students.

This is my standard palette. 

Rembrandt brand oil colors, left to right

1. (yellow ochre, scarlet red, permanent matter deep), 

2. (yellow ochre, scarlet, chromium oxide green, cobalt/ultramarine).

3. (yellow ochre, scarlet, chromium oxide green, transparent orange oxide),

4. (yellow ochre, scarlet, cobalt/ultramarine blue, permanent matter deep)

They become what I think of as a pink flesh, a golden flesh, a green flesh and a putty flesh.

Separately, I mix up a warm dark for modifying the flesh color in the shadows. It is burnt umber,  a bit of transparent oxide orange and permanent matter deep. I like this combination since it is very transparent. I can always cool it down later by adding some blue or green (something transparent or semi transparent like the thalos or viridian)

I then place a bit of the dark mixture above each color pile leaving some room between it and the base colors I just mixed. 

I then mix a little of my base colors with the dark to get a light shadow. 

Notes:

~Next I add white to the base colors to get two lighter tones.  So I end up with 4 strings of 5 values each. 

~It is important that I only mix from the base color up adding the dark mixture to get my shadow colors AND
~Work from the base color down adding white.
~This keeps white from polluting my shadows and allows them to stay transparent.
~If I'm using a dark mix and decide it is too dark I add more of the base color NOT white. This prevents the shadows from getting chalky.

~I  begin with the darkest, deepest area, the crease in the eyelid.

Notes for using this palette layout:

~If I'm painting a light mix and want it darker I add more of the base color not the dark brown mixture.

~When I'm painting an area with a certain value, I move sideways on the palette. For example, if the area on the painting I'm moving to is the same value but greener I'll just slide over and grab a little bit of the green flesh tone that's the same value. If it's the same value but pinker I'll slide over and grab a bit of the pink flesh from the same value line.

Squint to see shadow shapes.

~Paint on a bit of the lightest area, (not the highlight, that's last).  In this case the area above the eyebrow, a cool light flesh color.

~This gives you a range of color from the darkest to the lightest.  Everything will now be judged in relation to these two color/value points of reference. 

~I paint in planes, adding facets of color where I see them, trying to match value and pushing the color.

~By that I mean that I make it as colorful as I see it and then some. I can always dull it down by adding a neutral or an opposite color later on but it's hard to get back to pure color when it gets too muddy at the start.

~I have aded a bit of cad red to pump up the color under the brow and under the lower lid.
~The white of the eye is basically a cooler flesh tone. I added cobalt/ultramarine to achieve that.

~Closing in now,  I smudge the planes of color together a little bit, softening edges.

~If I planned to work on the painting for a second pass I'd make sure there were no big ledges of paint left by brush strokes.

~Big ledges left behind are problematic if you decide to move a line later.

Actually I couldn't resist working on it a bit more. I refined the shape of the iris, toned down the reds under the brow, and worked on the eyebrow a bit. There is a lot more I could do but it's just a study so I'm calling it done.

(Thanks for the demo pictures from class Jeanine!)

Toga Night at Drawing Group

The first Tuesday of every month we have a clothed model at drawing group. We have 20 minutes worth of gesture poses and a one hour long pose.

Tuesday's Toga, 12x9, oil on panel

It is a good idea to attend a costume night for several reasons. We get practice drawing all that pesky fabric and one night of the month it's pretty easy to find a model.

 It's the X's Drawing Group held at Forstall Art Center in Birmingham, AL. We meet Tuesdays, 7-9pm.

Here's one I did of my daughter-in-law, Amy Strickland, when she was gracious enough to model for the group. Amy is actually a writer not a rock star and she has the best costumes around.

The Pink Guitar, 12x8,  oil on canvas paper

Renaissance Amy, 12x9, oil on oil primed linen

And my personal favorite of her.

"Tuesday Night Blues", 12x9,  oil on panel

How to Draw and Paint Facial Features - Part 1

It's all in the eyes.

I'm doing a series with the oil painting class that I teach at Forstall Art Center, in Birmingham, AL. We will be doing small studies of each feature of the face and then putting it all together at the end with a full portrait.

I printed out two good reference photos of eyes to share with my class. They will have the option of which one to paint. (Thanks Jeanine for the in progress shots!)

Is it fair to make your class paint images of your favorite models, even if those models happen to share the same DNA? I submit that it is. Moving on.

We talked a bit about the structure of the eye as in this except from Andrew Loomis' book. 

Since every artist needs to work on their drawing skills we are doing a full value study in charcoal or pencil. I started off in pencil and quickly switched to charcoal after figuring out that my students could see charcoal marks better. 

I started off the drawing with a block in, taking care to measure placement on the page, checking angles and proportions. This sketch is larger than life just for fun.

Next I added shadow shapes and worked on cross contour hatching. I think aobut the lines I'm making the same way I do the eventual brush strokes. Use directional strokes to describe form.

This is what I finished in class. It could definitely use more work. 

Back in the studio I worked on it a little more, reminding myself of the things that I had talked to my students about:

Non-parallelism- the concept that in organic shapes there are no such things as perfectly parallel lines.

Wedges- the concept of how organic things grow into each other, twisting and spiraling into each other. The human body is less like sticks with tubes of clay over it and more like twisting strands of rope. Muscles flow around the body, into and out of other muscle.

What is in front? - Something is always in front of something else. Have a clear image in your mind of that and it will help you see it more clearly thereby drawing a more convincing illusion. 

Convexity- There are no naturally concave forms in the nature.  If it looks like a concavity, look again. It maybe be multiple convex curves twisting and spiraling together. There is a fullness and life to nature that plumps it up.

When I was happy enough to move forward, I traced the drawing onto tracing paper using minimal lines. Then I scribbled a little charcoal on the reverse side of the tracing paper and transfered it to an ampersand gessobord panel that I had previously stained with a bit of thinned burnt umber. The stain was thoroughly dry.

You could also trace your drawing directly but I wanted to preserve the drawing for future demo use.

To make the transfer I taped the tracing paper down and traced the lines with ball point pen, not pressing hard enough to mark the panel but just enough to see a charcoal mark.

I then redrew the eye with a medium permanent sepia pen. That allows me to retain my drawing when I get to the next stage, paint! 

I'm careful to actually redraw not simply trace my drawing.  Each step is an opportunity to make corrections to the drawing. 

Next time color mixing flesh tones and painting the eye. 

Sepia Love

More drawing group sharing.

5 minute gesture painting, oil on Vellum, 9x12

Anders on Tuesday, 14x11, oil on Ampersand Gessobord

I'm having much fun with these value studies. At this drawing group we only get one hour with the model so it is a lot of pressure to get color down. For now it is nice to be keeping things a little looser and simple. Also it is a good idea to go back to basics every now and then and think about concepts like value.

The oil on the vellum slides around with slippery goodness and feels on the verge of out of control. Kind of exhilarating.

On the more sustained piece, I started with a thinned out mixture of burnt umber, more OMS than linseed oil, gradually adding more paint, till I was painting straight out of the tube for the darks.

You may see some other posts about sketching with oil here.

ABC 33/40 in the Studio

A few weeks back I had a fun visit in the studio from ABC 33/40 TV anchorman Dave Baird and cameraman Johnny Rockett.

The Incognito Project exhibit and book had come to his attention and he wanted to do a TV segment for the Focus at Four show.

The books are on sale worldwide for 9 days only, April 22-30, 2013, at the special Portrait Society of America Conference price of $55, on Amazon or with PayPal through my website.

Below is the video. He did a great job editing out my nerves and eloquently summarizing The Incognito Project in two minutes, something I've never been able to do. I loved the Wizard idea for his alter ego, totally!


The book is available through Amazon, or through my website, or blog.

It will also be available at the Portrait Society of America's, Art of the Portrait Conference, Atlanta, GA, Artist's Book Table or at the Artist's Book Signing, Friday, April 27, 2013, 12:30 PM. Stop by and see me!