Portraits in watercolour

This month I thought that for a change I would touch on the subject of figure drawing and painting, as I am currently in the process of concluding the final lessons of a course I am giving on 'drawing and painting faces and the clothed figure in watercolour'. 

I have always loved to take photographs and use them to paint from so as a result I have   been in the habit of carrying my camera around with me just in case that opportune moment arose. In this way I have been able to capture many lovely moments and so have had no problem in selecting the photograph above from my vast collection for this month's project. Of course when taking a photograph, the subject matter is not always is as important as the end result itself, as this will usually affect the decision whether to paint the picture or not. 


As you can observe though, the group photo above also has an endearing flow to it and so this also enhances the overall composition of the picture.  Again if you look a little closer, as with my still life work I love to find an angle where the light is either coming from the side or even behind the subject. So with the light filtering through from the left side just behind the subjects, finding the shadows here was a relative 'easy' task. 

To begin with I chose to first pencil in the 'structure' of the painting and then worked in a more detailed manner by drawing over the pencil and using a fine-liner pen to draw in the shadows and shapes to paint in at a later stage. As this type of pen is water-soluble I like to think that this also adds a touch to the finished look of the overall painting. 

After drawing with the fine liner I usually rub out all pencilled work and finish off the inked drawing by marking in the highlights with a wax pencil. In this way my painting is ready for the watercolour phase.


For this watercolour I chose the following palette to work with - 


Lemon yellow
Yellow ochre
Cadmium Orange
Magenta
Rose Madder
Violet
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber
Sap Green
Vermilion Green
Viridian Green

Cerulean Blue

Cobalt Blue

Indigo

Paynes Grey

As you can see in the photo on left I decided to start painting from the background of the painting - I find that by starting with the background there is less of a chance of smudging the work done on the bottom half of the painting. I also think that by doing so you can give a better structure to your painting. This will bring out the 'shapes' of the foreground subjects more and so definite your work. You can also work out a clearer balance of values when you come to finish off the darker shades of the subjects in the foreground.

For the back ground I used Sap Green with some Cobalt Blue and proceeded to work slowly towards the left side of the painting carefully selecting the predominant colours for each 'stripe' of colour as I went along.

 

Next I proceeded to paint the seated figures - for these I used Rose Madder and some Yellow Ochre for the skin tones and later put in the shadows using various blues according to how dark the values were. I also used Cerulean Blue for the woman's and the girls tops and Vermilion Green and Cerulean Blue for the man's shirt.

For their hair I used a mixture of Indigo, Yellow Ochre and on the girls a little more Yellow Ochre more than  for the adults hair.

Finally I retouched the finished work with the fine liner and the white wax pencil once again. I did this strategically and sparingly so as not to overwork the finished work. I think that on the whole the process explained to you worked out quite happily. The photos below show the final finished work and the original photograph I worked from.

Your feedback is more than welcome here and you can leave any comments below. 

Meanwhile you can also view more of my work on www.artbreak.com/dora and 

http://www.wix.com/doralden/doranne-alden

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you found this month's instalment helpful and interesting - and also as fun to see as it was for me to paint it. 

DORANNE ALDEN CARUANA - dorart@hotmail.com