Portraits in Watercolours PART 1: Proportions

The Aquarellistas are back - and how! We had a wonderful session last week, dedicated to portraits. In the coming four (or maybe even five) weeks we will have actual 'lessons' with exercises and plenty of examples. 

In the first session we discussed PROPORTIONS, using Full Front Face view. 

The most important ones are:

• There the distance between the eyes is approximately the length of one eye,

• The middle of the whole skull is the horizontal line of the nose bridge/middle of the eyes/start of the ears 

• The middle of the face is the line from under nose to start of ears

• The width of the nose is also one eye

• The width of the mouth is the same length as the distance between the middle of the eyes.

Or, in one simple picture 😊 

NB: these are rules of thumb, not every human face has perfect proportions, yet they can be very useful if you have a portrait that somehow is not right. 

Marina's advice for portrait painting:
It is very important to KYM (Know Your Model 😊) . The best practice is to have someone pose for you. If they are not available, try to get a video of them. That way you'll understand their character a bit better. 
And then a couple of photos, that you will work with. You choose one, the rest is for further reference.

Once you have selected your base photo, you can trace it (provided it has the correct size) 
That sounds easy but it is a lot of hassle and you miss a chance for really deeply looking.

Another method is drawing Upside Down. (Put the photo upside down and draw it upside down) this works well because it makes you more objective towards shapes & shadows. 

And then again you can of course just draw what you see in the photo!

If it is just the basic sketch for a painting (vs a black and white drawing), make sure your lines are thin, so that they don't stain your delicate colours with grey. 

As a first exercise I had brought pictures of sculptures. This meant that the proportions were not natural but man-made and that was confusing to some. The positive side was that everyone was measuring like crazy and drawing upside down and trying to understand.
Also sculptures are monochrome, easier to see shadow and light, no shiny eyes and teeth or difficult skin colours to be created. We'll do that next time. 

No one was particularly happy or proud after this exercise, I was the only one delighted with the results! Because, Yes, Portrait Painting is Difficult. 

The exercises below are all different and spectacular in their own way.  

A special compliment for Denise who sketched two versions of the same sculpture. One indignant and upset and one strong and at peace. Love 'em both, well done!

 

Our hero Corinne usually needs half the time of everyone else, so she could already paint the second portrait. Proportions check!, colours check! 
She will be elsewhere in the coming weeks - but it won't be a problem I guess.

Laura painted a very good sculpture and still found the time to tweak her Antibes affiche! Looking fab

 

Bibbi's portrait - a wonderful struggle

In December 2011 Aquarellista Britt-Marie Isaksson left the South of France to go back to her homecountry Sweden... Bibbi is a wonderful artist, with an outstanding technique and amazing imagination. Before they left, her husband asked me to paint her portrait and Bibbi later asked if I would make sure there were 'Marina things' in it...

It had to be a 'reconstruction' portrait - Bibbi didn't 'sit' for me and wasn't there to be sketched or just checked if I was doing right, but I had a couple of pictures to help me - and of course I know Bibbi and of course I have an image in my head that I wanted to paint: that of a lively woman, with a warm and comforting smile, a great artistic talent and a colourful fantasy.

In the photographs I had were no 'usable' hands - so when I had decided on the pose, I took a picture of my own hand and used that...

And there was another challenge: if I paint a portrait, I really 'dive' into that person and whilst painting, I often 'become' that person. What I didn't realize was that painting a colleague-artist, meant that I kept adopting her style! It was really difficult to paint Bibbi and not paint like her... And more than once I thought, I'll start with a new one. But putting it aside for a week helped me get a fresh look on it and in the end it all worked out fine. I am happy with the result - and luckily, so are the new owners!

Portraits in aquarelle III

Beautiful granddaughter by Anna-Karin Fast

Five aquarellista's present last time we got together, and we produced as if we were ten...

Look at the results of only one afternoon!! I can actually report two parallel developments, one on the creation of realistic portraits, the initial objective of this "theme"... Anna Karin Fast started the aquarelle above, in her characteristic, light, direct and spontaneous style.

Ann Edwards' "Venus of Milo"

Ann Edwards concentrated on the lightfall and the representation of marble, as well as the typical features of the famous sculpture - we hope to see the finished product next week!

Bibbi Isaksson created a 'double portrait', from an old black and white picture of herself and her husband on holiday. She is still working on it, developing and researching until she finds the final shape. She experiments with photoshop:

I love the right-side eye! and the humor in the photoshop version...

Sandra Seymour-Dale and Cathie van der Stel experimented too, with portraits and colour, look at the fascinating results - to be continued for a long time!!

This is what 'the making of' looks like. Water, palettes, brushes, salt, kitchenpaper - and lots of tea!

Cathie van der Stel's latest version of her 'guy with a cold'

And another guy by Cathie

Note how natural he looks, despite the green, purple and blue! Fauvism in aquarelle portraits, it works! To be developed, as Cathie is definitely on the way of discovering something really worthwhile.

Sandra Seymour Dale's kaleidoscopic self portrait version 1

The idea was to arrange the separate pieces, put them on top of each other, to form one face. But that didn't make it stronger.

Sandra Seymour Dale's kaleidoscopic self portrait version 2

The project is not yet over, but arranging the pieces in the way shown above gives much more information on the person than a regular portrait. I think it is a great idea...

Next week: the finished results...more portraits! And then we'll go for something abstract again. On large sizes. And hopefully in great, sunny, warm, South French weather!

A Calendar for the new year!!

And...it's back to painting again :) our first aquarellista gathering will (maybe) take place next Tuesday, but that doesn't mean we're resting... I know for a fact that at least 4 of us are working really hard at the moment! Sandra, Marina TvB, Cathie and myself are painting against the clock, doing the best we can in representative portraits in aquarelle of naked women. They will be published next month, in a "Nudie Art Calendar" that will be sold for charity - Pink Ribbon. I have no pictures of the others yet, but I can show you some parts of what I did. Not the whole thing obviously - to see that -  you'll have to purchase a calendar for 25€ and support Pink Ribbon!

My model has gone through a lot, operations, chemotherapy, radiation, loosing her hair - but she has recovered - and how! She is one of the bravest women I know and I wanted to make a happy picture.

First of course the studies, sketching to get to know the person, the light, discover the best pose..

then carefully finding out the colours...

and then I (thought I) had it...

With this as a result

But then I tried some other perspectives... and this is what it ended up like for the calendar:

Happiness and freedom in sketch

And in aquarelle...

For the full images I refer you to the calendar - it will be presented somewhere in March (I'll keep you posted). In coming posts I'll show other calendar-paintings from the aquarellista's (of course only partly)