(Art tutorial) Acrylic / gouache painting – Portrait

Acrylic / gouache painting tutorial – Portrait

Step 1: Use pencil to sketch out the rough shape. Keep the proportion in mind. For example, how much percent is the head in the whole canvas.  How long is the nose related to the height of the face, etc.

Step 2: Once the rough shape is ready, you may start to put in the basic shading. This is to indicate where the light and shadow is cast on the object. As you do the shading, you may refine the shape, add in a bit details ( eg. the size of eyes, the position of lips start/end, etc.).

Step 3: Use one color to form the lighting on the object base on your pencil shading. The purpose of doing this is to get yourself familiar with how to lay the stokes according to the direction of the object surface.

Step 4: After familiarizing the object surface very quickly, you now start painting with colors. Put in the basic hue (eg. skin, hair, clothes, etc.) and start observing the colors in the shadow.

Step 5: Once you have basic colors there, from now on, you need to observe how colors change from light side to the dark side. For example, the skin tone in the light and in the shadow. Is it warm tone in the light, or in the shadow? Keep observing, at the same time add in details. This is the longest step. Since you know how the surface goes and what size of brush you should use, it is just about how much time you want to put in for the details.

Step 6 (finish): It is up to you that how deep the details you want to go for. The final step is about clean up the roughness. It could be rough strokes, some colors that are not so accurate, etc. Basically, in this final step, you should gradually stop adding in details. Pay attention to the whole image instead of the details. Stand up and look at the whole painting from distance sometimes. It helps you to capture the general feeling from you artwork.