vince’s ear

I bid you welcome to the sixth post in the “How To Paint” series. You can look at the Intro, Materials, Subject and Composition, Color, and Techniques posts where we went over the fundamentals and how you can get started with oil painting. From here on out we’ll tackle some common themes and subjects and eventually get to a step by step painting. As usual feel free to skip and jump around. These next posts in the series are not basics but more specific topics.

The image above is the “Birth of Venus” by William Adolphe Bouguereau. You may think it ironic, the choosing of a painting of a goddess surrounded by angels, cherubs, and other non-human entities in a post about painting people. But ever since we’ve been able to express ourselves through art we’ve been using our own human form to represent non-human subjects of all kinds from God, Satan, angels, the weather, the seasons and celestial bodies, to abstractions like emotions and vices and so forth.

Bouguereau painted regular people as well and was so good at depicting the human body and all its features in such realistic detail that some people claim it isn’t even art.

The Human Form

I think it’s worth looking into how we draw people before we paint them. By studying the human body and sketching it out, you get to learn all of its contours and shadows, and gives you an idea of the colors you might use when paint it.

The first thing we must look at is anatomy. Using live models is probably the perfect way to study the anatomy while drawing or painting, but this is expensive and rarely available outside the classroom. An easier way is to use photo references and/or use medical journals and anatomy books. Jean Michel Basquiat was a big fan of using “Grey’s Anatomy.” Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy vigorously and understood that artists must study muscles and bone structures before they could properly depict people in two or three dimensions.

Whatever your method of studying anatomy, it pays to have reference guides of some sort handy and anatomy should be as close to reality as possible. Whether you are painting people abstractly or photo-realistically, if your anatomy is wrong, your painting is going to be wrong. It’s just that simple.

The good part is, you can learn the human body fairly easily and as long as you have the key concepts you’ll be fine. So let’s take a look at proportions of the body, measured mainly in “head” lengths.

• A. The human body is approximately eight “heads” tall
• B. The torso is three heads tall
• C. The thigh area is two heads tall going from the knee cap to the bottom of the torso
• D. From the knee cap down is two heads
• E. The neck is 1/4 of a head
• F. The top head of the torso is the shoulder area
• G. 1/2 of a head down from the chin is the shoulder line
• H. The shoulder line is two head lengths wide
• I. The nipples are on the level of the bottom of the second torso head and are separated by one head length
• J. The belly button is at the level of the top of the third torso head down, and is at an equal distance to the two nipples by a length of one head
• K. The distance from the belly button to the space between the legs is one head
• L. The width of the waist at belly button is one head length
• M. The upper arm is one and one half heads long
• N. The lower arm is one and one quarter heads long
• O. The knee cap is 1/4 head lengths diameter in a circle
• P. The ankle is 1/4 head lengths from the ground

These are general proportions of the body. Of course you don’t always have the luxury of painting somebody standing in this position, but it won’t be hard to use relative proportions no matter what the pose.

Once you have the bodily proportions down you’ll want to look at the head a little closer. Here’s some guidelines for facial features and proportions (use either the original above, or the one with guidelines here)

• The eyes are in the exact center of the oval head
• The eyes are apart of each other by one eye width
• The bottoms of the ears are generally in line with the that of the nose, and the tops of the ears at the eyebrows
  
• An equilateral triangle is formed from the center of the lips to the center of the pupils
• If a line is drawn from the top of the nose along the edges of the width of the nose, it will touch the edge of the mouth
• The boundaries for the smile are in line with the pupils
• From the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin, 1/3 down is the lips, and 2/3 down is the crease of the chin
• The nostrils are halfway from distance of the chin to the pupils

Keep in mind these are general guidelines and you must use them relatively depending on the angles and viewpoints of your painting.

Painting People

Besides proportions of the body and facial features, when you paint you must consider the hues you will use, and how the light and shadows will affect your subject. While shadows are important in painting people, perhaps they are even more important in sculpting. Sculptors know how light will affect what people will see when shown on their work from different angles.

1. Flesh hues

Figure out what colors you’ll need and set them nearby or put a little of each color on your palette. Some good flesh hues are:

• A very basic flesh hue of a little burnt sienna mixed with white
• A base of equal parts of yellow ochre and cadmium red mixed with white
• Equal parts Naples yellow and cadmium vermillion with white
• Flesh hue or tint, straight from the tube, Grumbacher makes an excellent flesh hue
• A darker flesh could be burnt umber, ultramarine blue and a little Alizarin crimson

When painting the face or any other body part, remember that the blood flowing is more visible at the nose, ears and hands where the flesh is thin. These areas will need to have more red.

These are two base mixtures for flesh, the one on the left being the red and yellow ochre, the one on the right being the vermillion and Naples yellow. These are just bases, to which you can add more white or burnt umber or put more or less of the base ingredients. Really dark lines of the face and body I use raw umber, but generally the edges of skin and most other objects don’t create an outline in reality. Rather the edges of skin are soft, with the object or background behind it supplying the needed contrast to make it visible.

2. Other colors used

Shadows could generally be warm if the flesh is cool and vise versa. If your flesh is warm and red, your shadows could be the flesh mixture mixed with a little of any blue. Some darker areas of flesh can be the flesh mixture with a little burnt or raw umber mixed. Raw umber mixed with Grumbacher flesh hue gives a great warm dark tone for flesh, which can be used for shadows.

The colors you use in the face don’t always have to be so cut and dry. Yes, you will need flesh hues but at the same time, studying the reference could show you there are many different colors you could use. Use these colors to your advantage. Portrait painters know the power of complementary colors when they add a little green to the dark areas of the face to intensify the reds of the flesh.

3. Painting the eyes

Painting eyes can be very frustrating and difficult to do, but with enough practice it is possible to portray life-like eyes which exude human emotion.

For starters the eyes can be broken down into parts: the pupil, the iris, the whites, and the eyelids, all of which sit in the eye socket, slightly depressed form the face.

• When painting the eyes, remember proportion. There is a distance of one eye width between the two eyes.
• The pupil will generally be black or extremely dark raw umber and usually have a reflection in it. This reflection should be two toned, matching the whites of the eyes.
• The iris will have several tones and is never just one color. When you found the desired color, fill in the area with most of the color, with an outline of a darker shade of that color. Depending on how the light hits it will depend on where the lighter spot of the iris will be. In the eye picture above, the light comes from the upper left, leaves a reflection on the pupil and lightens the iris at the lower right. At close inspection, there will be lines in the iris pointing to the center of the pupil.
• The whites of the eyes are never pure white but shades of gray, and will most likely not be the brightest spot on the face or the whole painting. Look at the eye above and count how many tones the white of the eye actually has.
• The eyelids should be painted how you see them, keeping in mind not to make the eyelashes too conspicuous.

4. The lips

Lips can make or break a portrait. They can make an otherwise realistic looking portrait look fake. John Singer Sargent said, “A portrait is a likeness with something wrong with the mouth.” And if he has trouble painting mouths, you can imagine how I feel about them.

To paint lips,

• first follow the facial proportion guidelines and place your lips.
• The colors mixed should derive from your flesh hue but add a little more red or rose.
• Be careful not to make the lips look too pink (unless of course they are wearing lipstick). The lips above have quite a bit of pink to them, but should still look real.
• I use a mixed lip color plus a tiny bit of raw umber or crimson for the mouth line.
• Make sure to show a little reflection on the bottom lip, but not much or they will look too glossy.
• Softly blend the bottom line of the bottom lip with the surrounding skin to make them look natural, there should be no hard line here.
• Be sure to add appropriate shadows: directly under the top lip, and under the bottom lip and in the chin crease.

5. Ears

Painting ears can be tricky as they are a very complicated body part. The ear is a continuous tangle of contours and if not careful, you can detract from your painting. A tip here is to keep the ear simple believe it or not. Doing this will not take away from but keep the focus on the face.

As said before, blood flows close to the surface in the ear and ear lobe, so color it accordingly. Also be sure to add the shadows, but once again, keep the ear simple.

6. The nose

The nose shouldn’t be too difficult to paint. The trick is to make sure it looks three dimensional and comes out at you. Do this by

• making it redder, once again due to blood flow
• being sure to add appropriate shadowing underneath
• being sure to add highlights, and reflections, especially on the tip

7. Hair

This leaves the hair, and the only thing to do here is to use your reference and try to match it as best as possible, being sure to include highlights and reflections. Picasso said he pities the artist who has a thing for blondes because they are so hard to paint.

These tips should suffice for painting faces for the most part. As far as the rest of the body goes, just look at your reference, be it the model or a picture. The only way you can really accomplish a good painting of people is to actually do it, and it will take practice.

I’ll be sure to include people in the step by step painting instructions.

Until then, paint, paint, paint…

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