I've been painting hair! It has not been as painstaking or difficult as I thought it would be. I'm not finished yet, there are a few highlights I still want to put in the hair, but I'm happy with how it is coming along. Below are some progression images of the painting at various stages, It has changed a fair bit throughout the painting process, as most of my painting do.
There is plenty of good advise and
suggestions for tackling hair that I've stumbled across online which has
helped me immensely. The most helpful advise would have to be:
'Too often painters get lost in detail,
trying to
paint every last strand or curl
instead of concentrating on a unified,
overall effect'. 1
Capturing an overall effect and not painting everything little detail is something that I learnt while painting
my first MPC painting of a plant in a Glass Jar called
'Plant Cutting from Mum'.
To begin with I was painting every little root in the glass and as a
result it looked like a jumbled mess of lines instead of what is
actually was, roots in a jar. To resolve the painting I had to be more
selective as to which roots I choose to depict and had to give a more
generalised indication of the subject matter. This knowledge can be (and
was) transferred over to painting hair. As a matter of fact, the whole
idea of capturing an overall effect when ones paints is something that I
will keep in mind when painting in general.
Below is some really, really helpful advise from
Nicole Pellegrini over on ehow. Nicole says 'Whether you are striving for classical realism or a more modern,
impressionistic portrait, a few specific techniques will improve your
oil painting results for painting hair'. 1 She List them as followed:
-
Unless a subject's hair has been
dyed an unnatural color, use the same color palette for painting the
hair as you did for painting the flesh. Warm earth tones such as burnt
umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna and yellow ochre, which are often used
for skin tones, also work extremely well for hair color. Using the same
color palette will also help the transitional areas between skin and
hair blend more realistically and unify the portrait's color scheme.
-
Lay down a unifying hue and
value over the areas of the painting to represent the hair before adding
any shadows or highlights. A common problem in many paintings is that
the artist becomes too focused on details before defining form, value
and volume first. Choose a mid-tone which represents the average color
and value, light or dark, for the hair. You can then define shadows and
darker sections of hair, as well as begin to add highlights, but only
once the mid-tone has been established.
-
Paint darker, shadowed areas of
the hair thinly with transparent glazes of oil paint. Build highlights
with thicker, opaque paint applied heavily and with little painting
medium. Making the shadows recede and the lights physically emerge from
the surface of your painting will enhance its realistic appearance and
dimensionality.
-
When adding highlights to the
hair, ensure your brushstrokes follow the contours of the hair itself.
Soften the ends of the brushstrokes into the underlying color of the
hair but leave the brightest areas of highlights thick and not blended. A
fan brush can be useful in applying highlights and capturing the
textures and curls of human hair.
-
Paint the background surrounding
the hair before adding finishing details, and allow the background to
blend and bleed into the hair itself. Do not leave bare spaces or hard
lines between the hair and the background, but blend them in smoothly to
achieve "sfumato," a sense of air and lightness around your subject.
This technique was developed by artists in the Renaissance and can be
seen in the works of masters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Peter Paul
Rubens.
-
Do not attempt to capture every
single strand of hair or curl on your subject's head. Squint to blur
your vision as you look back and forth between your subject and your
painting, and concentrate only on the most prominent areas of detail in
the foreground of your painting.
Another helpful source I've found for painting hair is from
this wonderful book I borrowed from the library called "
Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits" It's a fantastic guide for mixing the colours for all things portraits, below is the section from the book on mixing dark brown hair.
Here is my pre-mixed palette, following the above suggested colour mixes. I thought to myself "really orange highlights? Her hair is going to look orange and so, so wrong." but I turns out my doubts were unjustified.
Palette before
Palette After
And now for the most helpful video I found on painting hair. This guy (
lancenporter) uses acrylic and a very limited palette, he is also painting a red head, but his principles for painting hair can be transferred to painting in oil. If you get a chance, head on over Youtube and have a look at Lance's channel, he has fantastic instructional videos.
How to Paint Hair Part Two.wmv
lancenporter
And now for some inspirational artwork I've been looking at for examples of how other artist tackle hair.
Scott Burdick
E Phillips Fox
Reference:
1.
http://www.ehow.com/info_8173429_oil-painting-techniques-hair.html#ixzz1TBf7RYUb
Further Link of interest that I have looked at recently:
It was really helpful to watch your video of you painting and the advice today is really helpful as well!
ReplyDeleteI recently started a portrait of a little girl in acrylic ( for an underpainting) and then am planning to use glazes of oil paint to add in color.
It's so great to read these posts. Thank you!!
Glad that you are finding my posts helpful. I enjoy reading your blog too!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see your painting when it's done.
Tracey xxo