Watercolor Portrait Painting

This is a post from Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.

Painting Portraits in Watercolor

Painting portraits in watercolor is ambitious. Figurative watercolors are some of my favorite subjects to paint, but they’re never easy (for me). Here is a post of useful watercolor portrait artist-links, tutorial videos, and tip articles to tuck into the coffers of your Painting Inspiration Cupboard.

Fantasy Watercolor Portraits

Here is a 12-minute watercolor portrait painting demo by Australian watercolor painter Hieu Nguwen – known on social media as kelogsloops. If you appreciate a bit of fantasy in your art, or using metallic pigments, you’ll enjoy his work.

Portraits in Watercolor and Colored Pencil

Lioba Bruckner paints a realistic watercolor portrait using both wet watercolor pigments, and dry colored pencil. Her process is narrated, and she gives some great tips about painting lips and teeth, as well as using lots of colored layers to create natural-looking skin tone.

Glazing Watercolor for Portraits

YouTube artist Cha Yeon demos a complete watercolor portrait in this video, with captions to relay color choices. The interesting thing is his underpainting of the face, done entirely in shades of green and blue, before warming the pigments to resemble skin tone. The other lesson in this 25-minute video is the level of transparency and the abundance of layering. This is an excellent demonstration to encourage *slowing down*, and the effectiveness of glazing in watercolor.

Watercolor Portrait Series

Stan Miller is a popular instructor on YouTube, and he uses a nice big flat brush to paint a bold watercolor portrait in this video demo.

Whimsical Watercolor Portraits

Chris Hong is a talented and generous illustrator with a whimsical watercolor portrait painting style. Her work is very recognizable, and I follow her on YouTube and Facebook. She posted a 30 minute demo video of a watercolor portrait here.

Watercolor Portrait Playlist

Steve Mitchell is a professional designer/illustrator who started a watercolor based youtube channel called The Mind of Watercolor.  His watercolor and drawing demos are clear and encouraging. He covers subjects like how to sharpen art pencils, applying washes, and painting portraits in watercolor. All good stuff. Visit his playlist of watercolor portraits to get inspired.

Painting Skin Tones

Kirsty Partridge writes ten tips for painting watercolor portraits, including which parts to paint first, preserving your highlights and working wet-into-wet, etc. Read the watercolor portrait tips here.

Oil Painting Portraits

Do you know the work of Alpay Efe? In this oil painting portrait video demonstration, he reviews five things he wished he knew as a beginner artist.

Inspiration from Other Artists

If you have a favorite art-related youtube channel, please share a link in the comments so we can check it out. And if you enjoy the links to artists and resources I scatter here and there on this blog, let me know, and I’ll keep scattering.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you in the next post -

Belinda

P.S. Joanna Barnum demos a brightly colored watercolor portrait for Daniel Smith in this article.

Art Quote

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert Anson Heinlein

The post Watercolor Portrait Painting appeared first on Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.