Portraits have the power to capture a likeness that touches the soul. You can learn to paint realistic portraits with artistry following the guidance in this inspirational book. Nine complete step-by-step demonstrations show you how to use watercolors to build portraits that come to life with realism and personality. Each demonstration features a different person—so you can explore a range of ages, skin tones, facial features, hair tones and textures—mastering each detail at your own pace. Even if you are a beginner, success is within your reach as you learn how to: • Place an image properly • Capture a likeness and add character • Paint realistic skin tones • Fix mistakes without starting over • Edit visual information for greater impact • Capture the textures of clothing and accessories • Select and paint a background that supports the portrait With this guide on your side, you can achieve the portraits you've always dreamed of painting. Get started today. Great portraits await!
Popular artist Al Stine shares his secrets and techniques for creating portraits alive with emotion, expression and color. In this book, Stine shows artists how to paint fresh and colorful watercolor portraits that are as unique and alive as the subjects themselves. 210 illustrations.
Based on the popular international collaborative art project, Julia Kay's Portrait Party, this book features hundreds of portraits in multiple mediums and styles teamed with tips and insights on the artistic process. The human face is one of the most important subjects for artists, no matter their chosen medium. Pulling from 50,000 works of portraiture created by the artists of the international online collaborative project Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, Portrait Revolution presents a new look at this topic—one that doesn’t limit itself to one medium, one style, one technique, or one artist. By presenting portraits in pencil, pen, charcoal, oils, watercolors, acrylics, pastels, mixed media, digital media, collage, and more, Julia Kay and co. demonstrate the limitless possibilities available to aspiring artists or even to professional artists who are looking to expand creatively. Along with works in almost every conceivable medium, Portrait Revolution shines a spotlight on different portrait-making techniques and styles (featuring everything from realism to abstraction). With tips, insights, and recommendations from accomplished portrait artists from around the globe, this all-in-one inspiration resource provides everything you’ll need to kick-start your own portrait-making adventure.
A beautiful, full-color guide to a better understanding of portrait and figure painting -- the materials, techniques for success and the special problems involved in painting people.
LEARNING HOW TO CAPTURE SUCH QUALITY HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER!Inside you'll find guidelines for rendering accurate skin tones in a variety of media, including watercolor, oil and pastel. You'll begin with a review of the five essential painting elements (drawing, value, color, composition and edges), then learn how light and color influence the appearance of skin tones. Best-selling artist Chris Saper provides the advice and examples that make every lesson and technique easy to understandâ€"immediately improving the quality of your work. You'll discover how to: • Paint the four major skin color groups (Caucasian, African American, Asian, and Hispanic) • Refine these colors into dozens of possible variations within each group • Select your palette and mix hues for clean, beautiful colors • Determine the color and temperature of light that falls on your subject • Paint direct and indirect sunlight, artificial light and highlights of light • Master the four elements that determine color in shadow • Use photographic references when you can't paint directly from life You'll also find seven step-by-step demonstrations and an appendix of sample color charts for each major skin type under a range of lighting variations. It's all you need to bring your portraits to life!
Colored pencil painter Alyona Nickelsen reveals how to use the medium to push the limits of realistic portraiture. Colored Pencil Painting Portraits provides straightforward solutions to the problems that artists face in creating lifelike images, and will prime readers on the intricacies of color, texture, shadow, and light as they interplay with the human form. In this truly comprehensive guide packed with step-by-step demonstrations, Nickelsen considers working from photo references versus live models; provides guidance on posing and lighting, as well as planning and composing a work; discusses tools, materials, and revolutionary layering techniques; and offers lessons on capturing gesture and expression and on rendering facial and body features of people of all age groups and skin tones.
Painting from Life: Explorations in Watercolor chronicles the progression of artist Douglas Lew as he takes on the most eternal and challenging of themes: the nude. Working side-by-side with other artists in the context of life-drawing sessions, Lew struck out on his own heightened pace of exploration as he grappled with the ultimate problem: How to draw and paint a nude model accurately and expressively within the time limits of a single pose, which were sometimes as short as five or ten minutes. Having started with single line drawings, Lew soon realized he could use watercolour to render volume more quickly. He then began to build paintings, sorting out composition, light, shapes, and colour as he worked. Once he mastered the nude, Lew sought to be freed from it: In a delightful game of hide-and-seek he created seductive abstractions, leaving parts of the figure visible. At the hear of the book