Painting Portrait Tips / Lots of information about how to paint a portrait
Almost all my commissions are portraits in oils. In in the past I made a few in watercolour. Here you see one of a boy. The other of my daughter that I made exactly fifteen years ago. If I had more time I would pay more attention to this fantastic technique. People often ask me to teach in this. But it still has too many secrets to me. Someday maybe?
Some years ago, when I often travelled in the Valencian Metro, I had the habit of studying fellow passengers. I tried to remember how the head of a particular person looked like. At home I tried, from memory, to draw the head. Today I came across a sketchbook of that period with some of these doodles. I was reminded, that I had to be careful because people soon notice when you eye at them for a longer time. I am pretty sure I did at least sometimes and it must have looked strange.
Once in a blue moon I had to draw from memory during the model-drawing lessons from Father Beatus Nijs, my unsurpassed art teacher. We had to observe the model for five minutes. Then we made the drawing from memory. A great experience! I did not preserved any of these drawings. Later I participated in more than one group to study nude models. There I proposed sometimes to do the same exercise. The drawing is from the 80s.
This week I put the finishing touches to the portrait of this young lady. A commission proceeded through my gallery in the Netherlands. For this occasion I show here also the pencil sketch. Such small, basic sketches I usually show to the client, it is explicitly not meant to already judge the resemblance. The idea is that I like to show how I want to represent the model, and to clarify the cropping. Therefore I make this drawing in the most simple way possible. After all, I have a choice out of a variety of photos and the customer wants to know in advance how the portrait will look like. If I would make the drawing more detailed, it would distract from that intention. I am glad the client gave permission to show this portrait on my blog.
Some twenty years ago I was asked to make a number of storyboard illustrations for a big movie project. I can´t remember what the script was exactly about. Anyway the set was presented in the Mayan culture in the dense Central American jungle. If I ‘m not mistaken there were also all kinds of fantasy creatures involved. And actors like Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek were sought-after.
In 1977, my wife and I made a tour to visit the pyramids & ancient sites in South and Central America . From the Aztecs in Mexico to the Incas in Peru. Trough this I had sufficient own photographs of those locations and I could use them as the basis for the illustrations. If ever the movie was released, I don´t know but the watercolours are still here in a box and I found them today whilst clearing away my studio. Memories hence, not only to the time I still occasionally made illustrations, but also keepsakes of our trip, where we got to know each other better.
As I told you, we were in Amsterdam. Bas and I, we had a meeting with Sjef to discuss new strategies for this blog. Soon we will publish the second long video tutorial. At the same time we want to do some changes to make this site more accessible. I get huge numbers of visitors on my blog and on my Youtube video channel. And I want to expand even more that success. More information on Portrait painting open to more people. That is why we had this meeting. I made the video shots with Helma´s photo camera, so quality is moderate. You see Bas, my webmaster, at the wheel, Helma my wife and Sjef, the expert on internet affairs. After the meeting we went for a short lunch and later we dropped of Sjef at his office.