Figure painting. Part 1 (Patreon)

This is the first part of the video is about the process of painting a figure. Information on this process consists of two videos, as I wanted to show and expand this topic as widely as possible. In general, I can divide my method of painting a figure into three steps. In the first step, I use only transparent colors to define the shape of the body parts, location of muscles, and light and shadow. The second step consists of opaque colors, in which I add more and more light shades to simulate the shape in the light. I apply the second step without waiting for the first to dry. This is an important point in my technique, namely that the paint must be movable and the layer must be mixed. This helps to produce a large amount of tonal gradations that are so necessary for realism and smooth form transitions.

In this piece ,for the first step, I used colors: transparent oxid-red lake (TORL), and burnt umber. Acteally that I apply the hair first, since this is the darkest part of the body, and it also has a radically different structure. For the hair I used TORL, ivory black, madder lake .I used a mixture of varnish, oil and turpentine for all the layers.( the recipe for this is in a previous post) .

For the second step, I use a mixture of opaque colors, namely natural sienna, ivory black, yellow ochre and titanium white. A mixture of yellow ocher or sienna with burnt bone gives a pleasant greenish tint to the body in midtones, while adding lighter shades I also mix Prussian blue and a little Mars red or cadmium red, depending on the color. To be more precise, I cover the entire body with one mixture, but depending on part of the body, I add red or blue shades. The third step is glazing, but unfortunately I was not able to record this step due to the tight schedule. However in parallel, I started another portrait, so I will talk about this stage in more detail in the next month.