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Part Two: Painting

Part two of my step by step guide for how I draw and paint portraits. Part one is here.

For this example we are going to be using a monochromatic palette. I recommend doing this when you first begin painting so that you can focus on value. When you are using a palette with multiple hues, it can be difficult to portray the correct values if you don’t have a firm grasp of color theory. It’s definitely doable and a very easy thing to learn, but I think it’s always best when learning something new to eliminate as many variables as possible. So for this palette we will pick a hue, and only change the saturation (how much black or white is added). I’m picking a nice red/pink hue for this one. I am also using the oil paint brush. It’s my preferred brush for painting digitally!

Another tip before we jump in, but I highly, HIGHLY, recommend picking a color palette before you even begin painting. Think about what you want your painting to look like, and think about what colors you may need to achieve that. Picking colors as you go often results in a color palette that isn’t cohesive, at least for me. Sometimes colors can get muddied, or sometimes they just don’t work together. Monochromatic palettes are obviously pretty straight forward, but it helps to pick your shades and work with those instead of choosing as you work. For me personally, this is one of the most helpful things I’ve ever done for both my traditional and digital art. So pick your colors, and then start painting!

Step 1. Pick a midtone for your base color. By this I mean, pick a shade that isn’t too dark and isn’t too light from your palette. The reason we want to do this first is because we want to have a shade to ground our highlights and shadows with. If we don’t have this base, sometimes our darks can be too dark or not dark enough. Or our lights can be too light or not light enough. So picking this base color is important for basing our shading off of. Here is my base layer:

Step 2. Look at your reference and figure out where your shadows and highlights are based on the light source. We discussed the light source in the previous part.

Step 3. Block out the shadows first. Focus on covering the shadow areas, don’t focus on blending yet. I recommend picking two or three different hues for your shadows, going from your midtone to your darkest shade. Start with the shade that is one step darker than your midtone. See my example below.

Step 4. Build your shadows by slowly covering the areas that are darker with your darker shades. This can be as complicated (16 different shades that get darker) or as simple (a couple of different shades that get darker) as you want. See my example below.

Step 5. Blend your shadows. Continue shaping the face and building your shadows until you are satisfied. A lot of times, I leave most of my brushstrokes visible because I like how that looks. See example below.

Step 6. Move on to highlights! You may only need a couple of shades that are lighter than your midtone. With the same process as the shadows, begin building highlights by covering the areas that are lighter with your lighter shades. These areas are going to be where the light source hits the subject directly. See my example below.

Step 7. Blend your highlights. Just like the shadows, continue shaping the face and building your highlights until you are satisfied. 

Step 8. At this stage, you can mess around with your values until you are satisfied. I recommend looking back at your lighting reference often throughout this process. You can obviously take artistic liberty here and deepen your shadows or brighten your highlights, etc. But once you are satisfied you should have a completed portrait!

Here’s mine!

I hope this was helpful. I want to reiterate that this is how I draw and paint portraits. There are other methods and steps, but I hope some of my approach is helpful!

Tips on drawing noses

Noses are especially tricky because they are a very three dimensional structure that has to be translated into a flat, 2D representation without looking… well, flat. While drawing them in profile is not that hard, but frontal and ¾ portraits are a bit of a challenge. For me, it all gets down to playing with light and shadows.

Establish where does the light come from in your drawing. Decide if it’s a sharp light, casting deep shadows or soft, difussed light. Does it fall flat on the shapes or does it bounce off the surfaces? (compare 4 and 15)

I usually add a white shiny spot on the tip, slightly to the side, to indicate where does the light come from. On the same side of the bridge of the nose I draw a bright line. (2, 12)

The deepest shadows come on the opposite side of the nose. Not necessairly right beside the bridge, but more often as a diagonal line beween the eye corner and nose wing (2, 3)

Usually at least one side of the septum is in the shadow. So are the wings, but the light often bounces off around nostrils. (1-6)

Depending on the direction of light, the brige can be lighter than the rest (8) or darker than the rest (12), but it’s not an edge - it always has it’s width (6), and is not necessairly straight (14)

The shape of nostrils is a great indicator of the angle of the nose and also easily tell us if the nose is upturned or not. (5, 7, 10) In general nostrils don’t look like elipses but more like comas. (bottom image)

The deeper the shadows on the side of the nose and near the nostrils, the more prominent the nose seems. Flat noses don’t cast as much shadows. (11 and 14)

The nose is a very unique facial feature and there are as many shapes as there are people. Gather as many references as you can and see how different shapes and proportions alter the general impression of a face. 

Torso reference