How to Paint an Oil Portrait

Artists throughout time have sought to recreate the human form and capture the subjects personality, features and likeness. It can be challenging and takes a lot of practice to be able to create realistic oil portraits.

Things You'll Need

• Photograph
• sketch pad
• pencil
• paint brushes
• Canvas
• paint thinner
• Linseed Oil
• palette
• Oil Paint
• Rags

Instructions

1. 

   Have photo reference, unless you have a model willing to pose for long periods of time. Create a thumbnail sketch to work out the details of the photo and values first. This step may seem tedious but will help you create better paintings. A thumbnail sketch is a mini-version of the painting usually only a few inches in size. My thumbnails have usually been around 2 x 3 inches to 4 x 4 inches...depending on the dimensions of the canvas. It's important for the thumbnail sketch to have the same dimensions as the canvas and just be scaled down. Use your best drawing skills to sketch out the portrait. If you need help, convert your photograph to black and white by photocopying it or switching it on the computer if you have a digital file of it.

2. make a mixture of paint and paint thinner and use your paint brush to draw the portrait. If you prefer, you can fist draw it lightly in pencil.

3. Set up your palette. Arrange your paints on your palette in a way that makes sense to you. Arranging them in the same order as they are in the color wheel is common, making it quick to find the color you want. Avoid using tube colors on your painting unless that is the look you are going for. Always mix colors to get the color you want. Never use black or white strait from the tube.
   Skin tone is going to come from a mixture of Alizeron Crimson or Cadmium Scarlet (red) and Cadmium Yellow or Lemon (yellow), and sometimes a bit of Titanium White for lighter skin tones, a bit of Phthalo Green for olive skin, or Burnt Sienna and blue hues for dark skin tone. I can't tell you the amounts of each paint to use, you will have to experiment with mixing to get the skin tone you are after.
   Remember that the parts of the person in shadow are not to be painted a darker version of the same skin tone, look closely and you will see the shadow is actually a different color.

4. Once you have your thumbnail, your palette and painting area set up, you can then transfer the drawing onto your canvas. First you might want to mark the center of your canvas as well as the center of your thumbnail sketch for reference. You can either draw it on lightly in pencil, or you can use a mixture of paint and paint thinner and draw it on with a paint brush. Just make sure to use a light shade to shade to paint with.

5. Mix a bunch of light skin tone color to start with using your red, yellow and white as mentioned in step 4. Use a small amount of the base skin tone with other colors to get different hues, such as Phthalo Green, Ultramarine Blue, Alizeron Crimson and Violet (Base + 1 color...don't mix them all together). You should now have 4 basic skin tones to use. Paint in these basic skin tones onto the subject in the painting where they belong.

6. Create shadow colors. The shadows may be warmer then the basic skin tone. To get the shadow skin tone, add Cadmium Scarlet and Ultramarine Blue to your basic skin color. Then to get different hues in your shadow color, take the shadow color and mix it with a little bit of Alizeron Crimson, Cadmium Scarlet and Phthalo Green separately, not all together. Now you should have 4 shadow colors. Paint in the shadow areas on your subject.

7. Paint in the darkest dark part of your painting. Be careful that you don't overdo it however. Just search your photo for the absolute darkest spots and transfer those to your painting. This will help give you a range of value on your painting to help you judge other values better.

8. Work on the features. Take time to detail the features on the face once all the light and shadows of the face are painted in. When painting the hair, squint at the picture and pick out 3 basic values. Mix the colors you need and paint the general shapes of the hair. You do not need to paint every strand! You can go through after with a brush and make long strokes to add the impression of hairs in a few spots, but it does not have to be super detailed.

9. Paint the rest of the painting. Using your menu of light skin tones and your menu of shadow colors, work them into your painting, remembering to blend the transitions well to prevent a choppy look as you transition from light areas to shadow areas.

10. Take a break. Once you think you have finished your oil portrait, walk away. Don't look at it for a few hours or even a few days. Come back to it with fresh eyes and determine if it looks right to you. Make any adjustments if needed. One way to get a different perspective on your work is to hold it up and look at it in a mirror....you will quickly see if anything looks unbalanced or funky.

Tips & Warnings

• It can be hard picking out colors from a photograph, but when you are trying to figure out what color you need for a certain area of the painting, it helps if you cover up all other parts of the painting so you can focus on that one spot. This will help you see what color is truly there, otherwise your brain will probably make an assumption about it and when you try to recreate it, it won't look right.

Resources

• Get some Practice with Oil Painting Exercises