How To Paint A Portrait For Beginners

A beginner'due south guide to painting a cocky-portrait

By Artists & Illustrators | Tue 25th May 2021

Peter Keegan shows how to paint a self-portrait using a mirror in this easy-to-follow, six-footstep guide

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The cocky-portrait is a popular challenge for some artists and central to the creative practice of others. Whether depicting themselves with savage honesty like Egon Schiele or hiding themselves in larger, narrative paintings like Peter Paul Rubens, the genre of cocky-portraiture provides an artist with a unique opportunity to evaluate who they are, convey a message or story, reflect on identity or mortality, or to simply play with new ideas, tools and materials.

However, for many of us, a self-portrait occurs when at that place are no other models around. With a well-placed mirror and the bravery to depict what is presented in front of united states of america, we are gifted with a number of unique challenges, rarely found in other forms of painting.

Should you flatter yourself? Should you re-create what you run across on the surface or look beneath? Should you try and show personality? Should you concord a item expression? These questions and more are the reasons why artists from Rembrandt and Van Gogh to Freud and Kahlo take turned to cocky-portraiture every bit a class of self-expression and discovery – and also why art lovers are oftentimes so fascinated with how artists see themselves.

Reasons to pigment a self-portrait

My ain journeying with self-portraiture started at school, when I would pigment and draw self-portraits regularly. Since so, I have made a signal of producing at least 1 self-portrait a year, in any medium or style I wish and at present accept a drove spanning the concluding 15 years. Over the years, I've painted myself at different landmarks in my life, such every bit becoming a full-fourth dimension artist or surrounded by my new family, besides as also only creating self-portraits for a simple visual challenge, such every bit one made in homage to a Freud exhibition I enjoyed and one because I merely like my new glasses.

I find information technology fascinating to see not simply how my style and approach has changed and developed, but as well how I've changed physically over the years. Once you become beyond the despair of historic period, wrinkles or hair loss, they become signposts forth your creative journey and become some mode to explaining your unique story equally an artist. Try non to worry about your appearance and paint something yous're not. Be honest and paint what you lot see – information technology volition look a lot more than accurate and sincere.

Remember, cocky-portraiture can be a fourth dimension to try a different method or arroyo then try something new, like a new set of colours or a different fashion. I concluded upwardly painting two portraits, ane sombre, half-length portrait and the other a smaller, quicker study which I will show you how I painted below.

How to paint a self-portrait using a mirror

Post-obit this six-step guide to painting a self-portrait will help beginner's and more experienced artists alike.

Step 1

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Begin by applying a wash of diluted Yellow Ochre to the newspaper, using a large apartment hog brush. Doing this takes away the intensity of the white surface and offers a mid-tone base to work upon. Don't pigment all the way to the edges every bit it keeps the marks visible at the end.

Step 2

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Apply a diluted mixture of Cadmium Red and Ivory Blackness with a size two filbert brush to start mapping out the major shapes of your portrait. Avoid looking for detail here and focus on simply the main, structural frame of the head. Cartoon but with straight lines tin can aid this.

It is easier to pigment and draw a face in warm calorie-free. Utilize a lamp with a warm bulb to provide an excellent range of highlights, mid-tones and shadows across the face.

Step 3

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Start blocking in the chief skin tones. Utilize a mixture of Cadmium Red, Yellowish Ochre and Titanium White, adding extra white for the highlights and a footling Ivory Blackness for the shadows in the eye sockets and under your nose, rima oris and chin.

Work with a larger brush, similar a size 6 filbert, to avoid the temptation to become into detail and focus on the larger masses of colours and shapes. Squint to help identify these masses too.

Read more: How to pigment perfect skin tones

Step 4

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At present begin to model the facial features. Once again, avoid thinking in terms of details and focus instead on the structure of the confront – the eye socket rather than the iris and educatee, for example. Use a smaller castor this fourth dimension, maybe a size four, to cease from overworking the painting. Establish a lilliputian of the habiliment besides, keeping the brushwork light and thin.

Read more than: How to paint fabric

Step 5

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As the painting develops, use thicker applications of paint, particularly in the lighter areas of the head. As well as the warmer lamp light, a second, cooler light source, such as the natural calorie-free from a window, tin add dissimilarity. To achieve the cooler light, add very small amounts of Ivory Black to Titanium White to brand a cold greyness. This balances the warmer reds and oranges of your olfactory organ, lips and chin – fabricated by using more than Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre and a touch on of Ivory Blackness.

Footstep half-dozen

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Utilize a size three apartment castor with pure Titanium White pigment to aid sculpt and shape the edges of your face. Soften some of the edges that you tin afford to "lose", such as the harder lines of the hair and shoulders, as information technology will create a better sense of depth.

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