Portrait Painting Step by Step

This is a painting of my daughter and granddaughter. You can see the photographic source I used. Which I took myself. I stopped and photographed my painting progress to demonstrate how I approach a portrait.

For the initial washes I used Windsor Yellow, Scarlet Lake, Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Cadmium Orange. It is important to let the washes dry between applications. Otherwise I tend to make a mess.

As I worked on the faces, I washed pale color into the background. I want develop the figure and ground together.

Then I began defining the features using my favorite Windsor Yellow and introducing a bit of Hooker’s green. I used Cobalt Blue and Peacock Blue as an underpainting for my grandchild’s hair. Also I added bits of blue to the red and yellow washes to cool it.

I purposely left parts of figure integrated (yellow on hair) into the background. You can see this on the my daughter’s hair.

Lastly I resolved important details of the face such as the eyes and lashes carefully darkening between the lashes and highlighting some of the lashes as bits of light.