Painting a bust face with acrylics

[housecarl]

The finished item certainly looks the part.
Carl.

 

[Meehan34]

thanks for the SBS and the perfect timing ot it.you know I was waiting on something like this. Thanks again for all of your help in painting with acrylics.

 

[pmfs]

Great photos!

I am sorry for asking this Dimitrios, but wich cell phone you have?
undoubtedly you are a very good painter and also a great photographer.

Beautiful work!

 

[jimias]

Guys thank you again for your kind words. It really was a very fun piece to paint. Pedro i have an iphone with small resolution. 1 or 2 megapixels if i m not mistaken. The truth is that for a cell phone it s pretty decent but nothing compares to a camera with a good macro lense. There is a big gap between what i see on my bench and what i see on the cell phone screen.

 

[tonydawe]

Thanks very much for your SBS Dimitrios. It's always instructive to see how another painter works. I was particularly interested to see how you use filters to emphasise certain areas of the face. Could you elaborate on how you aply them (consistency of paint, ratio's etc) and where you apply them on the face.

Thanks once again.

 

[jimias]

Tony the consistency of the filters could best be described as dirty water. If i had to to think of a ratio i whould say three drops of water to as much as just the point of the brush dipped into the color. To give you an idea it s only after the fourth or fifth layer that i start to see any kind of result. At these dillutions it is very important to direct the brushstroke to from the more highlighted point to the darkest cause thats where the greatest amount of paint will end up.(oh and always soak the excess paint on a towel or else it will be like washing). Now because my basic mix is kind of pale my faces always turn out flat. So i add brown madder on the cheeckbone area but any kind of red whould do. Then i apply some red violet on the sides of the nose and red for the tip of it. Finally i mix red with a bit of pthalo green and apply the filter at the area under the eyes( ont know how it s called but i m sure you know what i mean). I whould say thats about it. Be carefull though not to overdo it or elseyou may loose your contrast so thats the only drawback.
Regards

 

[Christosjager]

Thank you Dimitrios for sharing your technique with us.

 

[ChrisP]

Hi Dimitrios, i think you picked the better bust for this nice tutorial.Great, Chris.

 

[user 5827]

Very appreciated Dimitrios, I am a novice on acrylics, have painted all my faces in oils, this how to do for the flesh is very welcome....

My personal best regards.

Rod.

 

[1969]

Thats a great job you have done Dimitrios, like Marc i struggle with acrylic to get descent blending and tend to stick with oils which i find so easy to paint with, maybe i just need more practice with acrylics and to follow some tecniques like yours.

Steve

 

[PhilinYuma]

Well, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, consider yourself flattered! This is really impressive.
I like gouache, with its strong opaque colors, and have used Jo Sonja's brand for this and that for about 13 years, but not for figure painting. Have you used retarder medium with this brand? If so, how much?

 

[jimias]

Christara, Chris, Rodrigo, Steve thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. Phillip thank you for the kind words. Actually i ve never tried any kind of medium for acrylics nor some kind of wet palette. My technique is about having the right tone to blend a line between tow colors not but layering transparencies but rather by painting a fine line where the transition is positioned. I hope that makes sense.

 

[ATTİLA the HUN]

Dimitri, ı lıke your education Face paintings WİP. But ı have a question from josonja acrylic gouchae paint.
Can you show and share pics josonja acrylics gouchae to everyone?
I'm waiting.


Regards from TURKEY..................

 

[ATTİLA the HUN]

I forgot, please show tube or bottle of paint gouchae.
Thanks................

 

[PhilinYuma]

Serkan: In case Dimitri isn't up yet, here is a site that sells Jo Sonja's acrylic gouache in tubes and bottles: http://search.jerrysartarama.com/search?keywords=Jo+Sonja
You can find a lot of sites on Google; this is the guy that I do business with.
Just for the record, gouache is very much like water colour paint and is bound in the same way with gum Arabic, but the pigment is ground less finely and is often mixed with chalk to make a very bright and opaque paint. Acrylic gouache simply uses an acrylic medium instead of the gum Arabic so that it cannot be redissolved by water.

 

[Einion]

The Jo Sonja paints aren't gouache, that was merely a marketing term. They're now named differently and it says on the tubes "matte fluid acrylics", which is a much better description. Current tubes look like this, previous style looks like this.

The paints are made by Chroma, an Australian paint firm and their main site is here (currently undergoing some maintenance). Colour and pigment chart in PDF format is on this page for anyone who wants to cut straight to that.

If you want to buy online the prices are better on Dick Blick than on Jerry's, compare here to here.

Einion

P.S. The plastic tubes work great in case anyone was doubtful!

 

[ATTİLA the HUN]

Einion,Phillip thanks for further info.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Hi, Enion. I was surprised to see you say that "Jo Sonja paints aren't gouache, that was merely a marketing term." Certainly the eponymous painter calls it gouache in her decorative painting book (published around 2000, I think), and it has been called "flow formula acrylic" since at least 2003. Like you, I noted the change in the designation on the tubes, which used to be"velvet matt finish acrylic gouache" but had concluded (just a guess) that the change was due to the fact that the vast majority of non artists have no idea what gouache is or how to pronounce it ("goo ash" is a popular favorite ). By the same token, Pelikan call their Plaka line "kasein-emulsion farbe" instead of "temperafarbe", perhaps to avoid a connection with children's "powder paint" or the old egg tempera. Both Chroma's and Pelikan's practce, though, may simply reflect a shift to categorizing artists'/decorative paints solely by their binders.
This is hardly an earth shaking point and is wandering rather far off topic, but if you have any inside scoop that influenced your statement, I, for one, would be most interested to hear it.