Expressive Oil Portrait Painting: Color and Gesture

Expressive Oil Portrait Painting: Color and Gesture

“Thank you so much for taking part in this course and I hope you've enjoyed it. It's now time to work on your project. This could mean finishing the portrait you started by completing the course tasks or making a brand-new project! Either way, I strongly suggest you take the time to gather inspiration and make a unique project of your own. Make sure to keep track of your progress with different pictures of each step. It'd be great if you could also explain the choices you've made along the way and tell me if you have any doubts. This will help me guide you better if you need advice. Here are the main steps to follow: The Reference Choose a reference, make any desired enhancements, and start the project with a pencil block-in sketch. Figure out at least the head structure and the lighting.

The Underpainting Make an underpainting using raw umber or another semi-neutral color. Concentrate on the light and shadow relationships. The Bigger Areas Mix the tones for the biggest color areas. Start by establishing your darkest darks and lightest lights. Forget nuances for now and concentrate on finding correct relationships between the big areas. Squinting your eyes is a very useful tool for this phase. The Smaller Areas Start adding in the smaller planes and color variations. Concentrate on the form of the face. Where and how it turns? How do you use lighting to explain the planes? The Details Continue modeling the forms until you start feeling satisfied with the level of detail. Now is the time to check if your painting has enough contrast, enough full saturated colors and the overall relationship within the image has the desired flow. The Finishing Touches Add the finishing touches such as the dark and light accents. Focal points usually have the highest level of detail and contrast. Consider evening out areas where you want to draw less attention. And that's all! I can't wait to see what you've come up with. You can share your work with us by clicking on "Create your project". Remember to share both the final result and the steps that have led you to it. It would be great if you showed a picture of each step and added a brief explanation about what you have done in each one. I will be more than happy to answer any of the questions you might have along the way! I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, participate in the forum, comment on others' work, and interact with the community. See you there!”

Partial transcription of the video

“Hi, and thank you for joining me for this course. As you know, I have experience in classical painting techniques. For the last few years, I've been learning how to infuse my personality and my expressive style into my work. For this course, I've introduced tools to help you develop your own personal style. For the final project, I'd like you to produce an expressive portrait using oil paints and a photo reference. For that, the first step would be to choose and reimagine your photo reference. You can use Procreate or Photoshop to make adjustments to your reference photo, including altering...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Expressive Oil Portrait Painting: Color and Gesture

• Level: Beginner
• 97% positive reviews (33)
• 1687 students
• 4 units
• 16 lessons (3h 6m)
• 3 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Areas

  Fine Arts, Oil Painting, Painting, Portrait Drawing