Free Watercolor Lessons & Techniques
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Painting in Watercolor: Alyssa's Portrait
By Margaret Crowley-Kiggins, FWS
Introduction: Many artists are intimidated by faces. In this demonstration, using an accurate light pencil drawing as a guide and the original photograph as reference, I will show how to paint a portrait of Alyssa. I used three brushes: Winsor Newton Series 7 sizes 5, 7, and 10 rounds.
Equipment: The brushes I typically use for my paintings are as follows: "Jeanne Dobie Brush" Cheap Joe's Art Stuff, size 1 1/2", pure ox hair. This is great for large wash areas, it holds a ton of paint. Grumbacher Aquarelles, style 6142, sizes 1" and 3/4". These are great for smaller wash areas. Winsor Newton Series 7 Rounds, sizes 10, 8, 7, 4. I use these on the subject of the painting mostly. They are great for detail and because of their quality they hold a great deal of paint and yet are able to come to a very fine point, even in the larger sizes. They are very expensive, but are worth it because they are miles in front of the other brushes, in my opinion. An assortment of sponges - Elephant Ear, Silk Sponge, and Sea Sponge. I use these for everything from cleaning my palette to moistening areas of the paper. They are also useful to roll your brush on to get rid of excess water before applying paint. Q-Tips. These are a very useful tool when you are painting detail in a small area. They can take up small areas of paint, or smooth areas. I use a lot of these.
Palette: My palette consists of about 19 transparent, semi-opaque and opaque colors, no black. I mix all my colors - I rarely if ever use paint straight from the tube. I prefer Winsor Newton Artist Quality Watercolors and Da Vinci Artist Quality Watercolors. I pay attention to the permanence rating and try to keep only permanent colors on my palette - except for Winsor Newton's Rose Madder Genuine because I just love this color. In this painting, the colors I used for the wash and some detail in the face and hair were mixed from Aureolin, Rose Madder Genuine and Cobalt Blue, in varying amounts to make colors ranging from a peachy flesh tone to a brownish shadow tone. Some Cadmium Orange was used in the hair. The darker and darkest colors were mixed from Alizarin Crimson and Winsor Green. The lips were mixed from Cadmium Red Light and Alizarin Crimson, with a touch of Cobalt Blue towards the corners of the mouth. The background is Winsor Violet and French Ultramarine Blue. Click Here to visit my page that details the colors on my palette.