Applying Color and Form for Painting Portraits

In this painting tutorial series, expert painter Alexander Shundi explains step by step how to apply the color when and use form when painting a portrait.

Hi, I’m Alex Shundi and this is How To Paint A Portrait. In this next clip, I’m gonna show you how to apply color to this foundation. I’m gonna do so by using the color that we mix in the last clip plus turpentine. Now try to remember that this is gonna be a very quick demonstration. And normally speaking a portrait is gonna take a lot longer than it might seem looking at this video. So, while I have a color I’m gonna try to put in areas that are cool, and warm, and dark and light. I’m gonna put in a cool shadow right now, which is a little bit blue. Because shadows give tremendous amount of information. Little bit too much, I’m gonna take some off with a rag, I’m gonna back in to add some more light. And while I’m at it, I’m gonna do a little bit of middle tone here just to get rid of the white, basically. Okay. Now as you can see, the main color shunt is beginning, just beginning, to have a possibility. The nose is darker underneath, so I’m gonna cup it with darkness. And what that’s gonna do is that it’s gonna literally bring it out of the face. The idea of portrait painting, just like the idea of art in general, is to see, and not just to look. Underneath her mouth I notice that there’s a little bit of cool dark, so I’m just gonna put in a little bit. And the whole bottom of her chin is gonna be a little bit cooler as well. Go into the eyebrow, jump over to the other side and specify the shape of the eyebrow. And then I notice that this whole situation is little bit too dark, so I’m gonna lighten up right off the bat by doing this. And the white will make it cooler. I’m gonna just get a whole bunch of dark tones, put using a lot of turpentine right now, including some greens which I kinda like. Because green is a wonderful color, and the other side of skin, it supplements the color of the skin. And I’m gonna just fill this in very, very, very quickly. Just to get rid of the white, and you’ll see that as I do this, suddenly the portrait will start to look a lot brighter. In classic portraiture, whenever the hair is dark the background is light and whenever the face is light, you exaggerate the darkness behind it. That’s an old trick that Rembrandt use to used a lot. And naturally it start to pop out of the framing. I can start to sort of go around the face this way. It’s not defined at all, right now it’s just as dark as I actually see it being without any detail, without any highlight. Again, just to get rid of the white. And then, put a little bit of darkness behind the interior of the hairline in the other side of her face, that I will later on blend in to yellower color. While I’m at it, I might as well see where else in this cool, and there’s cool in here. Put it in here like this, make it come around the corner. Do the same thing here, because this part is a little bit round this ways. So in here is very light and here’s I go a little bit darker. It’s gonna start to define the form of the shape. Now, what I’m gonna do now is I’m gonna get a dark middle tone and I’m going to redefine a little bit of the form of darkness on both sides of the mouth, the underneath of the chin. I’m gonna go around and I’m gonna sort of blend everything now, because I don’t want things to be too offensively hard edge. So what you want to do is you wanna keep the integrity of each color while in between the two have an area that will lead from one color to the other. In order to do that, you have to locally blend just that border line, between the two areas very carefully. For now, let me cover this whole thing with a little bit of darkness and I’m gonna now smooth it off along the sides. Not too much, coz it can decay, now portrait can get to be really slick by doing that too much. I wanna take a little bit of yellow, I’m gonna kill it with a little bit of brown, I’m gonna mix it together, and I’m gonna get a… as cleanly a tiny bit more red, I wanna get kind of a middle tone color that I see her hair is being. You see what happens once I covered the painting with this tone, once I get rid of this white. The painting is beginning to like the model, in the next clip, I’m gonna show you how to put the last finishing touches on her.