Recap: 3-day Portrait Painting Workshop on Skin tones

This past weekend, I taught a 3-day portrait painting workshop on "Creating Vibrant Skin Tones." It was hosted by the Society of Figurative Arts in Addison, TX, and I had 14 wonderful students, including my twin sister, who came along to photo-document the event as well as paint alongside the rest of us. :-) Over the three days, I demoed each morning from 9-12, and gave one-on-one instruction each afternoon while the students painted from 1-4. We had a live model the whole weekend, and there was a wonderful energy in the room as everyone was enthusiastic about learning to paint skin tones. Here are some photos from my demo on day #1: I start by emphasizing composition, the separation of light and shadow, and accurate proportion. I am thinking about the likeness from the very beg… Read more »

Recap: 3-day Portrait Painting Workshop on Skin tones

After the Model Leaves - How to Finish a Portrait from Photo Reference

Oh, the dilemma. Paint something entirely from life, or use photos? While many of my paintings are finished completely from life in one or two sittings, not all of them--I am sad to say--have that luxury. There are lots of reasons for this - the sun goes down, the weather changes, the model session is up, the model is moving to a different state (this HAS happened to me more than once!), I have to scurry off on other errands, or perhaps I'm just plain tired and can't go further without the risk of making some big mistakes. So how do you finish a painting in the studio and still make it look fresh and exciting, like it did when you were on location or in front of the model? Artist friends, I am going to share a quick Photoshop tutorial with you, but before I do, I want to emphasiz… Read more »

After the Model Leaves - How to Finish a Portrait from Photo Reference