Watercolor portrait workshop - a different painting approach, step 2

https://enjoyingart.com/learn/signup

For a specific project, the painting process and techniques should be chose and defined by the message and feelings needed to be delivered with the painting. For this workshop, I like to bring you into a new challenge and its associated solutions.

This painting is a rather complex painting process, and it is different from the common and conventional ways. It is fun, though maybe scary and risk-taking. The subject, its angle and unique lighting contributed to the challenges. To prepare for the learning of this lesson, I suggest that you would go through the drawing study, and the technique exercises which I would demonstrate as part of this workshop. I hope that you will have fun, enjoying art and live.

Drawing Study
This is a drawing study for a watercolor lesson. My patron friend uploaded a watercolor portrait painting after watching my other portrait lesson. There are few things I would like to communicate, so that I will make a two-part lesson to respond to her painting. This is the first part. In this video, I focus on drawing with shapes, starting from general and large shapes then gradually approaching to smaller shapes and specific details. Value and edges of shapes were also demonstrated. Most of the painting's issues are not specifically watercolor issues, drawing charcoal can simplify the solutions. My next part for this lesson - watercolor portrait with this same reference will be coming soon.

1. First round of wash, I started the painting with some big washes for the background and the face and everywhere, then use lifting-off technique to create the light shapes for the hair. Then I used a palette knife to scratch for some impression of hair. There is only a window of 4 minute for me to do this, before the paper dried. Then I used a half inch flat brush to take out paint to return some light shapes on the face. After that, I applied a second layer with darker color to develop more value contrast for the shadow side of the face, the neck, the hair and clothing.
In this stage, I laid a good foundation for the painting.

2. After the painting is dried, I started adjustments, refining transitions and edges using lifting-off, then gradually adding new colors. This is the first step of adding some details and furthering the balance of the painting.

3. In this step of the painting process, I moved forward to adding smaller shapes and finishing the details for the focal-point area. And I added darker colors to finish the value composition.

4. I have been ignoring the eye glasses until this step. I will add the suggestions for the eye glasses. Techniques used in this task include the glazing, lifting-off and dry-scratching. And finally, I made another round of final adjustment to the background so the whole painting can finally get together become cohesive and balanced.

Music in this video by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: http://incompetech.com/