Portrait Painting, You Can Get Better Results Using These Two Simple Techniques

In the following article I am going to give two simple techniques to help you as an artist achieve accuracy in your portraiture. Sometimes as an artist you will start to evolve these techniques without even realising that you are using them, however, putting these techniques into words often helps the beginner.

The first technique is the application of negative shapes in your art. Essentially a negative shape is a shape formed around the head or body of a person that you can objectify. A classic negative shape would be the shape of the space between a body's arms and hips. Using negative shapes, you may see a curl of hair on the head you are painting. The curl of hair will interact with the background you are drawing. It may protrude into the spine of a book, half way up, on a bookcase behind the person you are drawing. As an artist it is easier for you to draw something you can define as an objective reality rather than something you feel emotionally about. So you would in this example draw the shapes formed between the bookcase, the head, the shoulders and the curl of hair. By drawing the negative shapes formed by the head and the bookcase accurately you will obtain a correct perspective and proportion for the head without even considering the head shape.

You can start to use negative shapes within the structure of the face and head as well. Take the effect of light for example. It is always good for an artist to draw a portrait in good directional light which casts shadows. This makes form much easier to see and define than a soft non directional light source. In directional light there will be shadows cast around the nose, around the forehead and the eyes. Start to look at the shadows and consider their shapes. Again by using this technique we are removing emotion from our work and making it easy to see an objective reality. The shadow cast by light on an eye often takes the shape of a triangle with one side flat down the side of the nose. Study and draw the triangle and not the eye. If this is correct then the proportions of the eye will start to fall into place without any worry on your part that you are not getting the shape quite right.

The second simple technique I would like to give you to use is called plumbing. Plumbing is imagining a vertical line on your drawing. You can if you wish lightly draw a vertical line to assist you further. For example imagine a vertical line from the outside corner of an eye. Follow this down. How near would this line approach the corner of the mouth. This technique is most useful if you are drawing or painting a head which is inclined from the vertical. It is also much more real for the viewer to see a head inclined slightly in thought than held erect like a statue.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this short article and if you start to use these two simple techniques you will be pleasantly surprised at the results you start to achieve.

Mark Robb is a practising artist based in Haworth. If you have enjoyed the article above then he invites you to browse the website http://firstforart.com/ where you will find all kinds of art materials, art prints and further advice and tips to help you become a better artist

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Colour - Using the Wheel

The painting shows a sunny day in the countryside where two women and their children wander through an open field. A summery sky filled with fluffy white clouds is bordered by a row of dark trees that almost hide a distant farmhouse. The grassy field, scattered with wild poppies, fills the entire foreground. What do we see in terms of colour scheme in this painting?

Dominant hue: Yellow-Green. As the Impressionists were well aware, a bright landscape looks mainly yellow. So, the Yellow-Green grass nearly fills the canvas.

Adjacent hues: Yellow tips the grasses and makes the straw hats of the small figures; a soft Yellow tints the walls of the farmhouse. Green makes a bold line of trees at the horizon and the shadows in the field.

Complement: Purple. The small figure of the woman in the foreground wears a dress of this shade.

Discord hues: Red poppies are clumped in the immediate foreground, softening in intensity of colour as they recede up the grassy slope. Blue sky shows between the clouds and is echoed in the parasol carried by the nearer woman.

Neutral hues: A number of extremely subtle blends of the colours used throughout the painting. To check how this works, study both models of The Colour Wheel, shown on my website for you to copy.

Earlier, I mentioned Chroma. This is the intensity of a colour, which can be altered - lowered - by adding small amounts of the colour's Complement.

Value refers to the darkness or lightness of a colour. Some hues can never be as deep in Value as others. Looking at the Wheel, you will see that for instance, Yellow can never be as deep in Value as is Purple, even at its greatest intensity, or Chroma.

So, how do you use this knowledge to match a particular colour? For instance, you might need to match a strong, greyish-blue of storm clouds in a landscape.

Squeeze from the tube a bit of the blue closest to what you see in the clouds, probably Cobalt Blue. You will modify this with a bit of its complement, which you know is orange. (If you must, you can use Cadmium Orange, but why not mix it yourself from Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Red?)

It will not look quite right yet. When comparing your mixture with those clouds, try to see whether the difference lies in chroma or value. If the chroma is too intense, add a little more orange. If the value is too dark, add some white.

When you have gone overboard with the white, do not be tempted to add black to darken the mixture. Add a bit more Cobalt Blue instead. Keep adjusting until your match is right.

At first, you will need a lot of stick-at-it-ness but believe me, it will soon seem easy as pie when the principles have become second nature to you.

When you make it a habit to plan your work by choosing that 'slice of pie' from The Colour Wheel before you start painting, you will never have another failure caused by a poor colour scheme. © Dorothy Gauvin

Dorothy Gauvin is an internationally acclaimed Australian painter in oils who specialises in an epic theme of Australia's pioneers. See images of her 'Life-Story' portraits, an ABC of homemade tools for painters with arthritis, plus tips and advice for aspiring artists and collectors on her website at http://www.artgallerygauvin.com/

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