“Expressive Portraits” by Jean Pederson

After going on about getting to Chapter 3 in ‘Ways to Learn Acrylics’, it’s kinda funny that I’m switching gears and blogging about a different book. Don’t worry, later blogs will be about acrylics from Chapter 3.

Next week in all three of my art classes we are studying portraiture, so it’s the perfect time to try exercises in “Expressive Portraits” by Jean Pederson. The artist's portraits are really wonderful; they are mixed media, painterly type portraits that use vivid colours. Her book is pretty comprehensive. It explains all the things a beginning artist would need to know about drawing/painting a portrait; it also shows you the methods Jean uses. I’ve done a few exercises to try and learn more about watercolour portraits.

One exercise ‘practice wet glazing’ I did twice; on the left the portrait was painted on textured watercolour paper 300gsm 10” x 7” inches and on the right on Khadi paper 8” x 8”. It’s funny that both paintings are of the same woman but they look totally different. They aren’t perfect but it was fun to have a go and not be too precious about the results. All my art teachers say that by experimenting you learn.

Another exercise ‘build a background of rich, varied darks' isn’t completed, but I like the way it looks without all the dark colours. It certainly doesn't look as good as Jean's first step, but I'm not that accomplished... maybe someday:)

Also, there were some pretty cool YouTube watercolour portrait painting videos. Here are two awesome ones:
Lesson 16 / Painting the Portrait by Stan Miller
Watercolor step by step how to paint portrait, demo by Zimou Tan