Portrait Painting in Acrylics

 

Transferring the Image to Canvas

A stretched canvas prepared with several coats of acrylic gesso, each sanded smooth before the application of the next, provides the surface for our painting.

The above line drawing was traced from our preparatory drawing and transferred onto the canvas ready to start the painting. A hard 2H pencil was used to outline the image on the canvas in order to prevent any smudging of the lead which would show up as a dirty mark beneath glazes of colour. You often get smudges when you use softer 'B' grade pencils.

 

The Underpainting

The first task in painting our portrait is to complete the underpainting of each area of colour in the picture. The underpainting is the local colour applied to individual sections of the portrait: e.g. the flesh, hair, jacket etc.

The form of the image will gradually be rendered by overpainting each section with transparent and opaque glazes. Therefore, the colours of the underpainting must be brighter than the colours you envisage in the final result as they will become darker when overpainted.

The basic acrylic colours used for the underpainting of our portrait were:

 

Mixing Acrylic Paints

Although you can simply use water to thin acrylic colours to a suitable consistency, it is best to add some acrylic medium to maintain the durability and elasticity of the paint. Acrylic medium comes in bottles of gloss and matte medium to meet a range of surface effects. You need to experiment with various mixtures of paint, medium and water to create the type of glazes that suit your painting technique. Some artists will patiently build up many thin glazes of paint to achieve a specific result, while others want to get there fast and use thicker mixtures.

In our portrait, the underpainting is built up in thin flat layers of colour mixed with equal amounts of gloss and matte medium. This gives the overall paint surface a neutral sheen. One of the advantages of painting thinly is that you may still be able to see some of your drawing beneath the surface. This often depends on the natural opacity of the colours you choose. However, if you lose some of your image, don't worry as you still have your preparatory drawing to refer to. It is in the nature of most painting to regularly lose and re-establish areas of the work.

 

Creating a Background

Painting Technique

The image above shows an actual size detail of a section of the background.

Technically, the background was probably the the most difficult and time consuming part of the picture to paint. The artist attempted a gradual transition of light to dark tones. This could have been applied more evenly with an airbrush, but the artist wanted the irregularity of the hand painted marks to unify the painting technique across the picture. The graduated effect was achieved by using small sable brushes and carefully stippling layers of transparent dark blue glazes over the light blue underpainting.