I’ve been a bit MIA here but I have a good excuse: I’m taking a painting class! I opted for an Acrylic Portraiture course as I don’t have any much experience painting people. Or drawing for that matter. I mean, come on. You’ve seen my cartoons, right? That’s the bulk of the experience. So this class should be good for me, I thought. Gain some experience and some tidbits on trying to paint a face. Good gravy, I am crazy pleased with my first piece. Now granted, the class is ten weeks long and this painting took me seven classes plus a few hours at home. So the result is about 24 hours of work. But that’s what it needed. A lot of trial and error and loads of help from my instructor. Full disclosure: he did help me shape the nose (both times I had to redo it) and started me on the hair. He also helped mix some colors. He was great about looking at the photo and going, “That’s an ochre, umber mix with just a touch of crimson.” I hope to get to that some day. Til now, I’ve been buying the paint in the color I already want. I haven’t done any mixing. What’s crazy is that we were told to bring in only five tubes of paint to class: the ochre, burnt umber, and crimson along with prussian blue and titanium white. That’s it. This is what you use for everything. Well, not exactly everything: I borrowed a bright red and yellow to make the more vibrant orange for the earrings. But really, I could have used what I had for those, too.
I took pics along the way so I can show you how the painting progressed. First night was getting a little overview, instruction on how to sketch out the painting, and picking the subject. They tell you to bring 2-4 pictures of faces. I brought a David Bowie (of course), a Cate Blanchett, and Lupita Nyong’o from an Allure magazine photo shoot. My teacher chose Lupita because the way her face was lit gave me more highlights and lowlights to work with.
OK, cool. Choice made. Easel set up. Paint on brush hovering a good two inches from the 16×20 canvas. Sweat coming down my forehead. I don’t know how to start.
Instructor: you can paint over it if you mess up. In fact, you will mess up. So begin.
First step was “drawing” the outline of Lupita in ochre. Then draw it again because your teacher says you drew her head too small.
Next was to continue to refine the outline. If it gets too confusing with the ochre lines, then move to crimson. Then to blue. The instructor’s technique was to measure with your fingers places on the face: measurement between the bottom of the chin to between the eyes, etc. Then when you find common measurements on the photo, use them to measure out the features on the painting. So if the measurement of one eye equals the measurement of the tip of the nose to the bottom of the lip, use that to make sure you plan out your face correctly on the canvas. Note: you will have to remeasure constantly. Especially when you realize something is off about the face. To say more would be a spoiler.
Second week of class was about filling in a base color.
At the third class, we continued with the base layer and then ventured into highlights and lowlights. The instructor taught us about pulling and scrubbing techniques. Basically, you don’t put a lot of paint on your brush and then you either pull the paint or scrub it in to blend. I liked the scrubbing. So much so that one of my brushes is beat to crap now.
The fourth week was the first time I had to move the bottom half of Lupita’s face up. I drew it too long. Notice I said “first time”.
So major facial reconstruction had to happen to poor, unsuspecting Lupita. This is when my teacher said, “Don’t worry. It looks like a face…it just doesn’t look like her.” Understood.
On the fifth week, my teacher came by and said, “Oh no. Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh yeah, I think…Oh man…maybe if you reshape the nose…I think the mouth still needs to go up…You will need to remeasure it all again.” I shrugged. He said I had a good attitude. I told him the fact that you told me it looked like a human means I’m already a winner. But yeah, I want it to look as much like Lupita as I can so I remeasured. Thankfully it was just tweaking the nose up a bit and reshaping the mouth. When he came around again, he let out a sigh, “Oh thank goodness.” The dude was worried.
It’s the sixth week and now things start rolling. The teacher told me to take a break from the nose and do something fun like the hair. He started me off with the technique and I took it from there. I also was refining the colors of the highs and lows to better match the picture.
Seventh week was putting on the finishing touches which I would complete at home while watching the fourth season of Catastrophe. Back to class: I finished the hair and the teacher gave me pointers on making the eyes look like eyes. He also told me that I had her left shoulder in too much. It’s covered in the photo above but you can see from previous pics that I put her shoulder almost to her neck. Why? Good question. I was working from two pictures: the close up and one that shows from her full hair down to her chest. Shoulder moved. Earrings started. The ones in the pic hang down low and since my portrait cuts them off, they looked like weird straps. So I opted for a simpler earring. Artistic license and all that.
The night after this last class, I put on the final touches. Or at least I think they are the final touches. Who knows what my instructor will say next time. He did tell me to get started on a new portrait. Only three more classes but I can get a good start on a Bowie. Oh yes.
