finished painting
I am teaching a watercolor portrait class this session. I have not limited the subject matter to painting people, alone. We try to discover shape and value and line and color in relationship to what suits our desire for personal expression through portraiture of people and/or animals. The above portrait was painted from a pure desire to reach in and paint how I wanted to depict the image from all that I have learned on my journey with watercolor. This portrait is of a friend of mine who agreed to allow me to photograph her for this painting. I thank her for this opportunity.
The following are my steps in approaching the painting above:

I drew the portrait with a simple line drawing. I paid particular attention to the foreshortening of the forearms. I used the acrylic crosshairs, mentioned in the previous post, to see this better. I then placed my board and painting on an easel at about 45 degrees and painted large washes over the entire painting and carved out the light, creating a pathway.

In this step, I worked on painting skin tones using combinations of reds and yellows. I don’t think I was as concerned about the actual color of the skin as I was with working out some of the values and carving into the large white shapes I had left like the fingers on the hand in the foreground, the tone of the chest area, the shadowed face and the shadows around the upper and lower right arm. I began to play with applying colors for her hair.

This step was the most informative for me. I think that is because the background helps me to set the tone of the foreground figure. I always try to paint the background in the middle of rendering the portrait because it affects the overall outcome. If I wait too long and finish the portrait, first, I get frustrated with the changes that the background creates with the figure. In otherwords, what I am looking for is to tie my background to the foreground. I always use colors from a background in the foreground. This makes this stage rather lengthy and I often experiment with color mixes on a scrap sheet of the same watercolor paper I’ve chosen for the portrait. I knew I wanted this to look like august and used some oranges and yellows to create my greens. I also used mixtures of red and blue to create the darks in the trees.

This step was fun in that I had a specific challenge to get her face dark enough to appear in shadow. I had to capture a subtle highlight in tiny areas like the brow over the eye, a spot on cheek, upper lip and chin. I started by laying in light shadow washes of blue. That didn’t go so well but helped me to visualise the highlights. I had to soften these blue washes by dabbing at them with a crumpled kleenex until I had them the way I wanted them. I had lost some of the rosey look of her nose and cheek and lips so I brought that back with a mixture of reds and yellows. Next to the damp rosey washes I painted in light washes of yellows and dabbed at them with a kleenex. It felt as though I was painting with my brush and shaping with my hand. I do this often in a painting. The other shapes I worked on was to define the blouse. I shadowed the wrinkles. I paid careful attention to the right sleeve that pressed against her skin. That shadow was very warm so I used some red and yellow there. I furthur described her hair, attempting to get the large shadow shapes.

In the final stage, I needed to tie everything together. It is often a time when I can capture subtle detail and add some more of my individual expression. The detail came in the form of painting the ring and the watch and defining some of the strands of her hair in the shadowed area. I deepened the shadows on her forearms and hand so they read well with the rest of her. I also included wet splashes of blue on her forearms and the top of her head to indicate some of the flickering shadows from leaves that played on her form. I used the reds and blues from the trees to paint in the tabletop.
The entire painting was painted on an easel set at a 45 degree angle.