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May sketch a day? Or when you can
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Message
Posted
I stayed up a bit later than I should have re-doing my first Doctor Who picture. I've been reading a lot on the Loomis method for drawing faces, so I'm much happier with the quality I'm getting to now. Still a lot of room for improvement. My 7-year old daughter is desparate for me to draw her, but I'm a bit nervous of doing that until I'm happier with the quality of the likenesses I can capture of people I'll never meet & thus won't get offended or disappointed!
Posted
You’d probably find it more beneficial to draw your daughter from life Simon, rather than using a photo of Dr Who as a reference.
Nothing wrong with that, all practice is good, but a live model is a much better option.
It could, and probably will be years before you are able to consistently pull out a likeness from a sitter, the only way is to keep practicing and accept that it’s not going to happen overnight!
At your stage, achieving a likeness should be secondary, although great if you can, master the basic principles of portrait painting and everything will fall into place!
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
It's recognizably the great William Hartnell.
I concur entirely, though, with working from live subjects - if you can get them to sit still. I've just had to do a portrait from a number of photographs, and it wasn't easy - at all. On the other hand, a quick oil sketch of the same man worked a lot better than the acrylic version: in that it caught him in a fairly typical pose - to the extent I'm tempted to ditch the acrylic, and work up the small oil on paper. The trials of portrait painting when you're not at all used to doing portraits.
I'll post this stuff in a few days - so you can see that though I've been painting for longer than I suspect you, Simon, have been alive - and reasonably successfully, though international fame yet eludes me! - my portraits are still quite crude because I've not painted many of them; practice is always the key - from living, breathing, even moving models. To be quite honest about this - I've seen portraits, of children especially, on the Gallery which are very obviously painted from photographs - e.g. the child is smiling or laughing: well, no one is going to maintain THAT pose for a portrait sitting. Rembrandt could capture a laughing face in a lightning sketch on which he would work, but - one isn't Rembrandt, sadly. Most of us wouldn't be able to, so we have resort to photos - nine times out of ten, though, these impressions tend to look frozen: not really alive at all.
If I had a child who wanted me to paint them, I'd look upon it as a Heaven-sent opportunity to get some real practice in - I wouldn't aim for a full-scale portrait straight away (though see some of the 18th century French masters - Boucher, for instance - for child portraits) but would produce a variety of studies of the child when it wasn't very aware that it was being watched: absorbed in some activity of their own, for example - maybe, painting YOUR portrait at the same time. Just hold the pencil or whatever lightly and get the main shapes in - don't worry about capturing a likeness (the less you worry about that, the more you're likely to achieve it, if my experience is anything to go by).
Posted
I guess that I am probably one of the 'artists' that Robert refers to regarding portraits of children which are 'obviously painted from photographs' although I avoid drawing
anyone who's displaying a full set of teeth like the plague! I agree that drawing from life is a totally different experience from using photographs but I do wonder how many portrait painters work exclusively with a live model. Watching programmes such as Portrait Artist of the Year I often see artists using the image of the sitter on their iPads and phones rather than observing the figure sat directly in front of them. I wonder too if the masters of old would not have taken advantage of photographs if they had been available to them.
Posted
Some good advice on portraits from two very talented artists. Bit lazy of me I’m posting the basic sketch for my next painting a made up scene of fishing boats landing at Filey . Traditionally the fisherman use cobbles , very tough boats build to take the strain of the local seas and weather very hardy and tough folk man them .
Posted
I think I concur with Russell on the subject of portraits. Whilst painting from life is a very advantageous thing to do, it’s not always possible. As with most forms of art, we all need to practise, practise, practise and this is where photos can come into their own to give us the variety of subjects to work from and learn. I’m sure many landscape painters use their photos to work from and get inspiration from when they can’t work ‘plein air”. We all use what we can to learn and improve- and it takes time. At least that was one benefit lockdown gave us artists -time!