Since this is by far the most successful painting I've ever done, I would like to record my experience about it and share with those who are interested in learning the process.
I normally divide my entire process into three stages: 1) the initial block-in, 2) features and details, and 3) final polishing. I suppose you must have heard about them hundreds of times from different instructors/books. Well, here we go again - I'm going to explain how I interpret these stages.
For example, in my first stage painting, I only had 7 colors, ordered by temperature from cool to warm, they are: bright shirt, background, green shirt, skin tone, hair, fur shawl, brown jacket. Some people may disagree on my color order of green shirt and skin tone, for example. It is ok. I think it is a subjective thing. Just be consistent with your own judgement throughout the entire course of painting once your decision is made.
Keyword: "big colored shapes with clear distinction."
Q&A
To put down the blocks as accurately as possible, you need to
compare each with other shapes (especially neighboring ones). One way to achieve
this is to compare the angle of the block edges. If you have curved edges it is
difficult to compare the angle and therefore more likely to make mistake. In another
sense, a curved edge can be considered as several connected smaller segments. You
may choose to compare two long straight lines for the relative angle, or to
compare among a number of smaller pieces if you use curve. It seems a no
brainer to do the former. Additionally, long straight lines helps while verifying
what you have put down too. It’s easier to spot something wrong by straight
lines than curves.
I usually do an initial assessment of all major colors in
the scene first. I then know the range of the color I need, whether I need to
add more paint to my default (limited) palette (see “Limited palette”). Then I
roughly sort these identified colors by their color temperatures. Then I evaluate whether I’m able to keep the
two most similar colors distinguishable throughout the entire painting. For
example, the two colors on the skin and the bright shirt in the initial stage
paint are fairly close. If I’m not confident that I’m skilled enough to maintain
the difference between these two colors till finish, I would make them more
different by increasing their temperature/value
difference. That means I might have to change the rest colors as well in order
to avoid new situations like this from happening.
As a consequence, a brown jacket will be painted orange, or a pair of green pants
will be painted blue. It is ok. I think it’s better to be off from observation
than not being able to describe what you want to represent. Additionally, even
if the above situation didn’t happen, you may still stretch the chroma to full
extent for your artistic taste (see “tonal painter vs color painter”). Once I decide the color assignment, I go ahead
start painting from the darker ones to the lighter ones. (see “Why paint the
darks first?”) Final words, I’ve seen brilliant painters literally started
their paintings from any point on their canvas, and found their way to spread
out the whole canvas till finish. Total master piece. I guess until that day, let us all stick with
the student version of the starting.
You must have heard/read that to paint the darks first. This
is the way I do it. Many painters too. But I only agree with this rule to some
extent. I’m not sure if painters that have painted this way truly understand why.
To me, the goal is not to paint the darks, but to clearly separate darks and
lights, yin and yang, during the design stage. The resulted positive and
negative space helps double check the design, and the accuracy of placement of shapes.
Therefore, if I work on a black canvas, I see no reason not to start with the
light first, so I can do the separation quickly. Having said that, there is
another reason one would start by painting darks first, due to material
reasons. If you paint light first, it is difficult to make it dark again by
painting it over it. This is because the pigments in white paint will always reflect
lots of light even being mixed with black paint. The white paint also reduces
other paints’ saturation, for the same reason. But if you paint dark first,
then you can paint light over it to make it lighter with no problem. For this
reason, in particular for oil painting,, it is almost always desirable to start
with the darks.
This is particularly important but difficult to do for colors
similar in temperature. For red vs blue it’s easy, but how about a light
yellow vs olive green? Warm gray vs pink? Well, for those I myself have problem
to tell. In this case, I try to compare two colors similar in value, rather than
two whose values are very different. If I can’t find other similar values, I
will have to make a guess. Just put down what I think the best hoping it will
turn out good. Another difficulty is to compare two colors both with low value
(like in the dark). My eyes can’t see clearly the chroma. Perhaps more experienced
painters can. In this case, I would have to make a guess again. But this time I
can relate to the color of the light source. If the light source is warm, then
the shadow is more like to be cool. Then I will make a bet by blue paint + the observed
true surface color of object (e.g yellow for lemon).
The simple answer is to add any warmer paint to a paint to make it warmer, and any cooler paint to make it cooler. Sorry, I haven't been very helpful. Let me try to answer that again. For me, as a lazy person, I just add yellow/red paint to make another paint warmer. I add white/blue paint to make another paint cooler. (Note here there are more than one choices to change the temperature. Which one to pick depends on the natural color observed from the model. Chances are you need to pick both with certain proportion) This is because I normally only have white, yellow, red and blue paints on my palette (see "limited palette"). Be mindful you still need to adjust value after mixing, which is likely to change the temperature again. Once you're more experienced, you will get the color you want with minimal mixing.
Here the color means both value and temperature. Both need
to be retained. For example, if shape A is darker than shape B based on
observation from the model, shape A should be darker than shape B on the canvas
as well. The same applies to color temperature. Luckily, you have some freedom
to tune the amount of that difference. For example, you can exaggerate the temperature
difference between A and B, or suppress it, but NOT switch the order. When the temperature
relationship between A and B is switched, that area may look “dirty” or
unnatural. It is even more damaging to switch value relationship, as this will
break the perceptional local 3D forms and create distorted surfaces. Our eyes
are very sensitive to the value relationship, not only by the order, but also
the amount of difference. I would recommend stick with the true value
relationship as being observed from the model for painting human face, unless
you really know what you are doing. There are two exceptions. First of all, when you want to change the surface color
of an object, such as paint a red dress as if it is blue. In this case it is ok to alter the color relationship of the red dress with respect to other blocks. However, within the dress itself, the internal relationship between light and shadows should still remain. Secondly, it is ok to break this
rule somewhat within small local regions, so that when you look at the painting
from far away, you can only see the average value/color at that spot. It will look like this painting has lots of noise. Many
impressionist painters use this approach. (Also see “How do I know if the painting looks good?”)
Whether a painting looks good is a very personal thing. But
I think a painting could look wrong. There are a million ways to look wrong for
a painting and therefore beyond summarizing. Having said that, I may suggest a
way to check the painting. Whether or not your painting looks good cannot be told
from standing 1 feet away, but from a distance. As the rule of thumb, for
normal sized painting you should step back at least 2 meters (6 feet).
For example, in the face area, I varied the colors from a solid generic skin tone to pinker, browner, or whiter versions. (Well, I think I really shouldn't list specific color names. In correct "terms", I varied the color to cooler or warmer, brighter or darker.)
You may find your drawing skill and understanding of objects structure starts to kick in at this stage. Some times if you feel "something doesn't look right", that's probably because of the drawing. Additionally, wrong value will make the 3 dimensional form distorted, also creating this "weird" looking feeling. So constantly compare the value of a stroke you put down to the existing ones.
If you find the average value/color of your initial shape starts to drift away from its original location after you add all features, the chances are you could be in trouble soon, unless it's intended. For instance, in my initial painting the bright shirt is only slightly cooler than the skin and similar in value. In later stage, I realized these two similar colors lead to confusion that the shirt is also perceived as bare skin. To fix that I made the bright shirt cooler and lighter, as shown in the 3rd painting.
Keyword: "vary initial shape colors with constant evaluation of value and temperature."
To paint a believable human face, the facial
features need to be first, obey perspective, second obey anatomy. Unless you
have master drawing faces, it is a good practice to lay in the landmarks, as
forms of shadow blocks on the face: 1) eye: a shadow block with upper boundary aligned
to upper eye socket. Lower boundary goes down to at least the lower eye lid. Be mindful of the keystone shape between two
eyes. 2) nose: a shadow block with upper boundary aligned to the tip of the nose.
Lower boundary varies. 3) mouth: a shadow block with upper boundary aligned to crest
of the lower lip. Carefully determine the location of block, as it defines the
length of the head. Upper lip can be ignored for now. Check points: 1) double
check if (1)-(3) sit right with respect
to the center line of the face (you may draw a imaginary line). 2) double check
if the boundary at the top of the eye socket, bottom of the nose, and then chin
are parallel (or in correct perspective). Sometimes for female models with pointy
chins, it’s easy to get it wrong. In that case, give her a squared chin for now
so you can check the perspective.
3) I call my third stage the "polish" stage. The goal here is to correct previous mistakes, re-enforce some marks, vary edge quality, and add some spice. I would do highlight very moderately, usually only around 4~8 spots. I find too many highlights are very disturbing. I always leave it out when in doubt. Based on my experience this stage is where the "overly-painted" happens. As a consequence the result from this stage is less visually pleasing than that from the end of last stage. I've heard it could happen to EVERY painter.
Keyword: "When in doubt, don't paint it."
Value, in this context, means luminance or light intensity reflected from the paint. Color means the chroma, in this context. In broader terms, color should include both value and chroma.
This is a very subjective feeling of a color, from millions of years of human evolution. Warm colors usually are associated with fire/sun, which, as a source of energy, appear yellow, orange to red. On the other hand, cool colors are associated with winter scenes like snow/ice, therefore appear white to blue. Based on modern science the warmness/coolness can be represented by a color temperature by the blackbody radiation. In contras arty to the psychological acceptance, a warm light is emitted by a blackbody radiator with low temperature, while a cool light is emitted with high temperature.(Check Wikipedia). In terms of color, the light from warm to cool can be named from red, orange, yellow, gray, blue, violet. Note that the color green is not included in this set. For those absent colors they are more neutral and can be manipulated to warmer/cooler versions easily. Also note that even those gray feels like a neutral color, it is not. More often it gives a cool feeling. On the other hand, the black usually gives warm feeling. Sunlight at noon at 6000 Kelvin degree is generally considered the “whitest” light and is cool.
Another important concept while understanding this concept is that everything is relative. Use the noon sunlight as example, if you have a studio light that has the same 6000K temperature you get a cool light. But when go outdoor, the blue northern skylight is much cooler so that the sunlight is actually appear warm.
A tonal painter focuses on representing the scene by dark/light relationships. Color is secondary to them. A color painter focuses on recording the light reflected from the surfaces, and tries to describe the light by its color. However, when the surface reflects very little light (such as dark objects or in shadow), it loses its chroma and appear gray or black. To cope with that, the color painters compress the dynamic range of the paintings a lot, by raising the darkest dark to midrange value, such that the color paint can retain its best vibrant. Because of this reduced dark/light contrast, they have to exaggerate the chroma somehow to make the paintings interesting again. Similarly, bright paints also loses chromaticity and are avoided, even though the loss isn’t as severe. However, keep in mind that the color painters still have to make the value relationship correct in order for the chroma to work for their painting. A correct value relationship between two surfaces means that if A has less value than B from the scene, then it should be so on the canvas. It is perfectly ok to change how much A’s value is less than B but not to switch this relationship. Usually a tonal painter uses full dynamic range of the value. A color painter uses half (Wikipedia Monet). Great painters can paint both. It’s their preference to concentrate on value contrast or color contrast.
In studio scene, where the lamp light source is 5500-6000K. There can be a secondary light source but it does not compete with the dominant light source.
