Painting portraits using glazes and impasto
Here’s a 5 point snapshot of how I approach painting portraits and equestrian artworks using traditional glaze and impasto techniques.
1. The subject
There are two key points to consider here:
One, identify the main features that define the person. It could be the eyes, a shock of red hair, bushy eyebrows a large nose or a combination. Build the picture around them to ensure you are making the most of the subject’s uniqueness.
Two, spend time with the subject and talk to those who know them well to identify a pose that they ‘own’. How they sit and read, staring out of a window, head to one side, hands in pocket, slouched or upright. If you can discover the postures that best define this person you will be a long way towards a pictures that conveys their individualism.
2. The drawing onto canvas
Remember this is not a piece of art to frame and display, it is a drawing that needs to act as a plan for the painting ahead. It is an opportunity to study the face, build confidence through familiarity, begin formulating a battle plan and use the pencil to explore the shapes and contours you can exploit. In the picture below you will see that my initial drawing (done with a 2b pencil) is produced with bold, plan-like strokes so that I can then seal the pencil in place with a fan brush, water and white acrylic, as in the second picture. This means that when I apply oil paint, if it doesn’t go to plan, I can wipe it off and retain the underdrawing.
3. Tonal work
Here I work with paynes grey (for a cooler shadow) and burnt umber (for a warmer shadow), as a glaze. My medium for thinning down the paint is made up from turps (1 part), linsead oil (2 parts), damar varnish (2 parts) and venetian turpentine (1 part). This allows me to create a thin glaze that doesn’t run down the canvas and which retains its position when wiped.
I cover the whole canvas in a dark glaze until I can just see the pencil drawing underneath and use a cotton cloth to wipe out the lighter areas of the picture, thus creating a tonal image. This approach allows me to explore the face shapes and muscle direction, in preparation for applying colour, as I remove the glaze with my fingers and cloth.
4. Mixing flesh colours
It often strikes people as odd that I use flesh mix straight from a tube, but in the long run you end up controlling the amount and accuracy of the flesh colour because of the consistency and precision of the approach. I simply squeeze out the desired length then tint it with small amounts of alizarin, cad red and ochre, along with paynes grey and burnt umber to ‘dirty’ the flesh colour and remove any plasticness.
I also add my flesh mix to hair colour, albeit subtly, to ensure it ‘sits’ comfortably on the face.
5. Finishing the painting
I work the flesh colour into the canvas using filberts and blenders (fan brushes) and allow the colour to overlap the darker glaze areas to produce half tones and areas of reflected light. As the painting gets lighter the paint gets thicker (impasto) which pulls the lighter areas towards the viewer in contrast to the thin dark shadow areas which push away.
When this stage is dry I add thin dry areas of colour, along with strong thick highlights to bring the picture to life.
This is just a simple and basic account of how I work, but for those interested in going into more depth I run a series of workshops covering all of the above aspects and a lot more.
For more information contact Cathy on 01367 252 206 / email cathy@mike-skidmore.com
Angela Davis
no one told me this at art school Mike and so am grateful for this expert advice