How to Start Portrait Painting
This demonstration shows how to start portrait painting with grisaille underpainting.
I use a slow and safe approach where you would start making a painting without colors using only the grays or the browns. I use the browns instead of grays because I find it easier to add on colors on top of the brown underpainting than on the gray underpainting. I use this approach only when I know that the model or whatever I am painting will be available for a while or for multiple sittings for me to have enough time to colorize it after the grisaille part is done. However, the grisaille part itself can be done in one sitting if you work fast enough on a head that is not too big in scale. For this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting, I used a lighting here where it would give it a nice contrast between the light and the shadow side of the head.
Pic 1 starts out by roughly getting in the large masses of the head shape. I focused much on where in the canvas I should put the head. Due to minding much on the compositional matter, I daubed on in a very unkempt manner. But it would clean up as I proceed. At this point, it’s just about getting the paint down where you want it to be on the canvas. I used burnt umber paint of Gamblin brand. I used a fat brush to mask in large shades of masses indicating overall head structure. I kept the paint consistency pretty washy to give room to build up thick when I can make marks with better authority after the understructure is more accomplished, otherwise it can get very muddy consuming a lot of paint to move around trying to fix very thick paints of the initial layer.
In pic 2, of this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting with grisaille, I started working with thicker paint, mixing titanium white into the brown paint. I treat both the shadow side and the light side with equal importance and paint thickness instead of the common practice to dull out and compress the shadow side emphasizing on the light side. What gives the head volume and makes it turn actually has a lot to do with working into the shadow side, with reflective values and colors, especially with complementary colors. If you look at ever past masters’ paintings such as of Sargent’s who used big contrasts of lighting, you’d see that their shadow sides still has much colors in them painted just as importantly as the light side. They aren’t just blacked out. Even in Caravaggio’s work. I find it best to just paint what you see instead of using how-to-create-illusion-of-reality formulas by rules. As Claude Debussy said, rules don’t make art. I’ve made a lot of adjustments here as I was building up paints working into finer forms of the head, and would continue to adjust, add, and refine the forms from here as a sculptor would with a clay model-starting out by throwing large dabs of clays then refining from there until it’s finished. I recommend you to check out how sculptors start their clay modeling even for tips on how to start portrait painting.
In pic 3, as continued refining to the point where you’d notice the features such as the eyes. I try not to look at it as eyes but just focus on refining the form all around the face, and eventually things will look like what they are. But everything is just daubs of forms put together throughout this whole demonstration showing how to start portrait painting in grisaille.
In pic 4, I continued in the same fashion and just kept refining the forms, adding forms of brighter highlights and also darker accents. More black paints can be used to push the contrast but I left this grisaille here as the darkest darks can be achieved while colorizing. But this is a comfortable spot to stop on the grisaille approach and start adding on the colors. Check out other demonstration posts to see how I colorize after showing how to start portrait painting in grisaille.
Though this demonstration shows how to start portrait painting in grisaille for the purpose of being an underpainting, grisaille technique isn’t always used as an underpainting for colorizing later, but it actually was used especially back in history, to give the illusion of being sculptures, which is very interesting. So it’s a very good approach to use to paint sculpturally and think as if you are making a clay sculpture. It being colorless is how that sculptural illusion is created. Famous modern figurative painter names John Currin is have recently done some super cool paintings in grisaille to illustrate it as sculptures. The work “grisaille” actually means grey, so to be more specific, the ones done in browns would be “brunaille”. Greens are also used, although I’ve never myself, and would be then called “verdaille”. I like to use “brunaille” because it’s easier to transfer it into colors laster, especially for skin tones. I suppose one can just say brown underpainting but “brunaille” or “grisaille” I guess sounds fancier. But in general as underpainting approach, I think it’s more commonly known as “grisaille” regardless it being brown or green, thus I’m using the term “grisaille” also for this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting.
I actually derived to doing the grisaille underpainting myself when I didn’t know the term “grisaille”. It always kept me from struggling more down the road while working with colors. I always used burnt umber to draw in first when starting a painting and I found myself defining that drawing or understructure more and more until it would pretty much become a finished painting without colors. Usually glazing is usually used to colorize on top of the grisaille, but I do not use that approach but add colors in opaque manner-you can see this process in other demonstration posts although it is now shown on this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting in grisaille. If you add the colors that way you can still incorporate the grisaille approach in alla prima manner of painting, if you keep the grisaille part much less developed and loose.
Some interesting historical facts about grisaille is that it was used as imitation-sculpture because back then sculptures were considered more expensive than paintings-and example of grisaille done as is and more just for the sake of being an underpainting to be colorized after. Grisaille was also used by painters to show engravers as colors weren’t needed and would be a waste of artists time since using colors is much more time consuming and difficult. Often it is said that the assistants of the masters painted in grisaille before the masters added the colors, since it takes less knowledge and skills to paint or draw without colors. We do see many artists that draws well but don’t paint very well. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this How to Start Portrait Painting demonstration.
I use a slow and safe approach where you would start making a painting without colors using only the grays or the browns. I use the browns instead of grays because I find it easier to add on colors on top of the brown underpainting than on the gray underpainting. I use this approach only when I know that the model or whatever I am painting will be available for a while or for multiple sittings for me to have enough time to colorize it after the grisaille part is done. However, the grisaille part itself can be done in one sitting if you work fast enough on a head that is not too big in scale. For this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting, I used a lighting here where it would give it a nice contrast between the light and the shadow side of the head.
Pic 1 starts out by roughly getting in the large masses of the head shape. I focused much on where in the canvas I should put the head. Due to minding much on the compositional matter, I daubed on in a very unkempt manner. But it would clean up as I proceed. At this point, it’s just about getting the paint down where you want it to be on the canvas. I used burnt umber paint of Gamblin brand. I used a fat brush to mask in large shades of masses indicating overall head structure. I kept the paint consistency pretty washy to give room to build up thick when I can make marks with better authority after the understructure is more accomplished, otherwise it can get very muddy consuming a lot of paint to move around trying to fix very thick paints of the initial layer.
In pic 2, of this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting with grisaille, I started working with thicker paint, mixing titanium white into the brown paint. I treat both the shadow side and the light side with equal importance and paint thickness instead of the common practice to dull out and compress the shadow side emphasizing on the light side. What gives the head volume and makes it turn actually has a lot to do with working into the shadow side, with reflective values and colors, especially with complementary colors. If you look at ever past masters’ paintings such as of Sargent’s who used big contrasts of lighting, you’d see that their shadow sides still has much colors in them painted just as importantly as the light side. They aren’t just blacked out. Even in Caravaggio’s work. I find it best to just paint what you see instead of using how-to-create-illusion-of-reality formulas by rules. As Claude Debussy said, rules don’t make art. I’ve made a lot of adjustments here as I was building up paints working into finer forms of the head, and would continue to adjust, add, and refine the forms from here as a sculptor would with a clay model-starting out by throwing large dabs of clays then refining from there until it’s finished. I recommend you to check out how sculptors start their clay modeling even for tips on how to start portrait painting.
In pic 3, as continued refining to the point where you’d notice the features such as the eyes. I try not to look at it as eyes but just focus on refining the form all around the face, and eventually things will look like what they are. But everything is just daubs of forms put together throughout this whole demonstration showing how to start portrait painting in grisaille.
In pic 4, I continued in the same fashion and just kept refining the forms, adding forms of brighter highlights and also darker accents. More black paints can be used to push the contrast but I left this grisaille here as the darkest darks can be achieved while colorizing. But this is a comfortable spot to stop on the grisaille approach and start adding on the colors. Check out other demonstration posts to see how I colorize after showing how to start portrait painting in grisaille.
Though this demonstration shows how to start portrait painting in grisaille for the purpose of being an underpainting, grisaille technique isn’t always used as an underpainting for colorizing later, but it actually was used especially back in history, to give the illusion of being sculptures, which is very interesting. So it’s a very good approach to use to paint sculpturally and think as if you are making a clay sculpture. It being colorless is how that sculptural illusion is created. Famous modern figurative painter names John Currin is have recently done some super cool paintings in grisaille to illustrate it as sculptures. The work “grisaille” actually means grey, so to be more specific, the ones done in browns would be “brunaille”. Greens are also used, although I’ve never myself, and would be then called “verdaille”. I like to use “brunaille” because it’s easier to transfer it into colors laster, especially for skin tones. I suppose one can just say brown underpainting but “brunaille” or “grisaille” I guess sounds fancier. But in general as underpainting approach, I think it’s more commonly known as “grisaille” regardless it being brown or green, thus I’m using the term “grisaille” also for this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting.
I actually derived to doing the grisaille underpainting myself when I didn’t know the term “grisaille”. It always kept me from struggling more down the road while working with colors. I always used burnt umber to draw in first when starting a painting and I found myself defining that drawing or understructure more and more until it would pretty much become a finished painting without colors. Usually glazing is usually used to colorize on top of the grisaille, but I do not use that approach but add colors in opaque manner-you can see this process in other demonstration posts although it is now shown on this demonstration showing how to start portrait painting in grisaille. If you add the colors that way you can still incorporate the grisaille approach in alla prima manner of painting, if you keep the grisaille part much less developed and loose.
Some interesting historical facts about grisaille is that it was used as imitation-sculpture because back then sculptures were considered more expensive than paintings-and example of grisaille done as is and more just for the sake of being an underpainting to be colorized after. Grisaille was also used by painters to show engravers as colors weren’t needed and would be a waste of artists time since using colors is much more time consuming and difficult. Often it is said that the assistants of the masters painted in grisaille before the masters added the colors, since it takes less knowledge and skills to paint or draw without colors. We do see many artists that draws well but don’t paint very well. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this How to Start Portrait Painting demonstration.