Practicing painting people in watercolour. (Patreon)

Hi everyone,

If you’ve watched this video:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/37677718  you’ll know that painting people in watercolour is something I’ve never done before and ‘people’ are on the list of suggested subjects that you’ve given me. So I knew it was time I faced my fears. 

I want to thank all of you because you have inspired me to step outside my comfort zone again and try things I’ve never painted before. You teach me as much as I teach you. You inspire me to be better and to try harder. Before I joined Patreon I told myself not to bother trying to paint people, 'Stick with what you know,' I thought to myself. I was too scared to try and I told myself I couldn’t do it. I thought I’d fail. Over the weekend I was determined to prove myself wrong. I put some relaxation music on and I spent Sunday painting the painting pictured above.

This is my younger son when he was about 5. He’s 24 now. He’s the son at the end of the ‘Chelsea Dalmatian tutorial’. I took a photo of him one morning just after he’d woken up. I was trying to get him to eat his breakfast so I could get him ready for school. He was rubbing his eyes. I thought this would be another good one to practice with before I work up towards painting an entire face. I didn’t have to deal with eyes or a nose with this one so I thought it would be achievable.

My process:

I’ve had no experience mixing skin tones so I watched a few YouTube videos. Then I wrote a few colours down that I had and I thought I could use. I have a little Mijello palette that I’ve never used so I thought I’ll put some colours in that palette and that can be my ‘flesh tone palette’.

In the palette I squirted out the following: DS is Daniel Smith and WN is Winsor and Newton: 

Hansa Yellow Light  (DS)

Naples Yellow (DS)

Raw Sienna (DS)

Brown Ochre (WN)

Burnt Umber (WN)

Pyrrol Orange (DS)

Cadmium Red (WN)

Alizarin Crimson (WN)

Permanent Rose (WN)

Cobalt Blue (DS)

Cerulean Blue (WN)

Then I had a play and I mixed some of the colours together in my watercolour journal. Now that I know I can work with these colours I will fill the paint wells up with paint.

The paper I used is Fabriano Artistico cold pressed paper. It’s fast becoming my favourite paper to paint on. 

These first layers on the painting I painted a week or two ago. I mixed some Hansa Yellow Light and Cadmium Red together (you can see it on the plate in the photo below). I took a big breath and lay my first wash on top of the skin. I kept it really pale because 1: I was scared to go too dark and 2: I watched the other artists on YouTube and they said to keep skin pale and build it up slowly. I washed it over the hair as well because I vaguely remember an art teacher of mine saying that you should put some of the colours you use on the skin – in the hair.

I decided to wash the hands in the same colour as well while I had that colour there- mixed.

Then I could see that the hands were lighter than the face (on the reference photo) so I knew I had to give the face another layer of paint to darken it slightly. When that was dry I mixed some Alizarin Crimson with Raw Sienna and I painted the shadow on the side of the face, the lips and along the hairline.

Then I used that same mix (the Alizarin mix) in the ear. I squinted to see the main shapes. It’s easy to get carried away with detail too soon. I knew I should work from broad to specific. So I needed to get the main shapes in before I started to add any detail.

I was dreading painting the hair so I decided to jump in and get it over with. I painted another layer of the first mix of skin colour. I was trying to get the movement that I saw in the hair ( the way the hair fell on his head).

Then I painted a layer of Burnt Umber over the hair and I tried to leave the lighter areas showing. Again, I didn’t want to get bogged down in the detail here so I used a large round brush because it forces me to be more relaxed with my brush strokes.

After I did that I left it for about a week because I got busy making other tutorials.

When I went back to it on Sunday I decided to get the hair painted in because as I said, I knew I would have the most difficulty with it.

I layered a few more layers of Burnt Umber and some Sepia and I ended up losing all my lighter areas. So when it was dry I took my scrubber brush and started to rub some of the paint off in the lightest areas. I find it removes easily on Fabriano paper. Then it looked a bit patchy so I painted some more layers over the top to soften the highlights. I decided to close my IPad so I couldn’t see my reference photo because I was trying to make it look like the photo and there’s too much going on. I had to simplify it and work with what I had painted on the paper.

So I got it to the stage where it is above and thought that it wasn’t too bad. Hair is something I’m going to have practice a lot!

Then I went back to the skin and I used the colours I have on the palette. I had to look really hard at the variations in skin tones. I had to compare one shape with the shapes that surrounded it. If I needed a cool colour I’d mix cobalt blue into the skin mix. For the warmer colours I’d use one of the pinks and I’d mix Naples Yellow or Burnt Umber into it.

As I painted I asked myself:

“Is this shape lighter or darker than this shape that’s next to it?” 

“Is this shape warm or cool?” 

“Is this edge on this shape hard or soft?”

By answering those questions I was able to paint the rest of him without much difficulty. 

What I learned was:

I needed to go slow and have patience and lots of breaks.

Layer the paint. 

Work slowly building up layers. Don’t go too dark at the start- get there gradually, sneak up on the darks.

Work on damp paper to begin with and then when I start to add detail determine whether the shape has hard or soft edges. If it has hard edges I work on dry paper. If the shape has soft edges I’d either paint it on damp paper or I’d paint it on dry paper and I’d quickly soften the paint edge with a slightly damp brush.

Make sure I get those shapes correct. Painting a finger or an ear is more difficult than painting a petal or a feather. The shapes have to be correct or the ear or the finger looks strange. If I get the shape of a petal or a feather slightly wrong- it doesn’t matter, nobody will notice – not so with human body parts. Hence - go slow and really look hard at what you are painting.

Thank you again! It’s not perfect but it’s a good start and it has given me the confidence to try more now. I’ll need to practice quite a bit more before I’ll be ready to make a video tutorial but practicing won’t be too much of a burden. I’m excited to paint some more people!

Louise

💕