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The following article was published in our article directory on May 15, 2010.
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Tips on painting portraits with water colour

Article Category: Arts and Crafts

Author Name: Rob Tyrrell

Portrait painting is often linked with oil painting. Nevertheless, water colour has been used to create many successful portraits. They offer a way of capturing quick informal studies that, what they lack on detail they more than make up for in style and character. Washes and wet-in-wet effects are ideal for showing the soft delicate shades of flesh and the speed at which they can be done lends themselves for capturing those fleeting expressions.

To be able to paint a good portrait, you'll need to be familiar the individual aspects of the face. A useful way to practice these is to produce a number of quick sketches in black and white washes. This will mean you can concentrate on the form without having to get bogged down with colour.

Use a round no.8 brush and make up two washes, one light one for the skin tones and a dark one for the shadows. Firstly, define the shape of the head with a light oval wash and use the dark wash for the shadow on one side of the face and neck, use more of the dark wash to describe the eye socket and the shadow under the nose. Next define the shape of the upper lip and shadow under the lower lip. Connect the shadow areas with the light areas. Do this by rinsing your brush and shaking off any excess water, place it on the shadow above the eye and pull the brush across into the lighter wash. Soften the edges with a tissue. Use the same technique soften other areas such as the top of the lip and chin. Keeping it simple like this will help you get used to the shapes and the proportions, try different angles and lighting effects until you're totally comfortable with the way the paint flows and how the shapes are rendered.

Children are interesting subjects to paint but, unfortunately, they don't seem to want to sit still for as long as the adults and the artist has to be able to capture their likeness as fast as possible. However, the fluid nature of water colour and it's ability to show delicate colouring make it a useful medium for portraits of young people. Two keywords you should remember when starting a portrait are "speed" and "simplicity". Don't get bogged down with being absolutely precise, a light sketchy approach will hit just the right note when capturing the freshness of youth.

Young skin tends to reflect a lot of light with fewer large shadow areas of the older sitter. Limit yourself to a palette with a few light and fresh colours. Always use a clean damp brush when lifting out highlighted areas, this helps to avoid your colours getting muddy. Ultramarine can be used delicately to suggest the shadow areas, it's strong but luminous, allowing the white of the paper to come through.

Getting a good pose can be the making of a good portrait. If you know your sitter try to incorporate a familiar gesture or expression, it's a good way of getting the personality across. Providing some sort of entertainment will help relax your sitter and keep them still for longer. A teenager may be content with music, younger children will sit happily in front of their favourite TV show. At the same time, you'll find their faces are constantly moving allowing you to capture the sub-conscious expressions. Provide rest periods, a teenager will need one every 20 minutes, a younger child more often to make sure they don't get too fed up with the process.

Before you start, sort out how you want the lighting, make pencil sketches whist chatting to your subject to both relax them and find out about their hobbies and personality.

Keywords: art,painting,water colour,portraits

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