Finding a Subject to Paint
Obviously the best things to do are to ask a friend to sit for you or to find a portrait painting group in your local area. But a portrait painting generally takes a few sittings and, while a willing friend may be happy to come back, at a portrait group you usually get your model for only one 2-3 hour period. This, combined with the fact that you are probably going to want to do more portraits than you have willing friends and paid models, means that you are going to have to find a way of recording poses for future reference.
Recording Poses for Portraits
To do this you can either take the traditional route of becoming an avid sketcher and note taker or you can use a camera (or a combination of the two of course). I am not as anti painting from photographs as some artists are. However, there are pitfalls that you need to be aware of and experience of painting from live models is essential if you are to overcome all of them. One of these pitfalls is not as insurmountable these days as it used to be. Namely that there is not enough information in a photo and that you have to use a lot of imagination and draw on your experience of working from live models.
This is a remnant of a bygone photographic age. The age when you went to Boots and picked up a tiny 10 by 15 cm photo with an even tinier face on it. It is simply not the case any more. Nowadays if I take a photo with my old, mere 3.2 megapixel, digital camera it collects vast amounts of information and I can blow it up to the full size of a pc screen and work directly from that. It is true that if you look at a live model you can see all sorts of interesting colours and tones, but the fact is that when I work from photos on my pc screen, I can see almost as much inspirational information as from a model. (For more problematical pitfalls of working from photos see also Portrait Size and 'Collecting Subjects' below)
Light Conditions for Portraits
If you can find a portrait model who is willing to sit for some sketches or a photograph, you might want to spend a bit of time thinking about the light conditions. Natural, outdoor lighting in the northern latitudes is usually quite cool in colour. If that’s where you are and you want warmer lighting then come indoors. Unnatural light generally casts much warmer colours across the face. I have a standard lamp without a lightshade that I like to stand quite high above, and to one side, of my sitter. Rembrant liked lighting his subjects from above. It gives an air of drama, as does having one side of the face almost completely in shadow.
If you want to try something a bit different you can make a portrait painting look quite sinister by lighting the subject from below. If you are taking photographs then take more than one. You never know until later what effects you will get with and without the flash, from different angles or when altering shutter speeds and apertures for example. If you take a few you can pick and choose which effects you like later on. Finally, if you’re not particularly interested in the background, a screen behind the sitter can subtly reflect its colour onto the face and help you to observe the outline more clearly.
Collecting Subjects for Portraits
If you don’t have a portrait model then you can always go out and capture some subjects. If you are a sketcher you are going to have to learn to work fast and discretely. You’ll need a very cool temperament and you’ll have to learn to use your short-term memory because people will get up and disappear in the middle of it. If you want to take photos obviously you don’t want to go around offending people by sticking a camera in their face without asking them. The problem is that if you do ask them you’ll get one of two responses, an uncomfortable decline, or even worse, the opposite, a pose and an awful cheesy grin. The solution could be the zoom lense. This means that you can easily make sure that people don’t even realise that you're taking a photo, particularly in a large crowd. However, beware. The human eye is approximately
equivalent to a 50 mm camera lense. The more you deviate from this
lense length the more the perspective of the image becomes distorted
and the less 'natural' your portrait will look.
I personally find this very difficult to correct when I'm working on a portrait, even after plenty of experience of painting from live models, but if you don't, go ahead and don’t worry
about taking photos of strangers. Think how many you’ve already inadvertently taken of people in the backgrounds of holiday snaps during your life. I know
plenty of artists do this. Here is a quote from the portrait artist Dennis Frost’s
brilliant book ‘Capturing Personality in Pastels.’ “my scrap book
bulges with photographs of stolen expressions and un-selfconscious
mannerisms.” I also know of a very famous artist who takes a camera around with him
because I’ve heard him say so. The only time I would be wary of this
is with taking photos of children. In this day and age I would not
recommend that you do it without asking permission from the child's parents
first.
Care About Your Painting
More important than simply finding a portrait subject, is finding a subject that you really want to paint. I have found time and time again that if I really care about doing a good painting, if I believe ‘this one is going to be my masterpiece’ then I produce a much better portrait than if I am fairly indifferent. It’s simple really; if you care passionately about something then you will give a lot more love and attention to it and so produce a better finished portrait. Rather ironically, though this is still important to me, it was more important when I first started. Now I can find plenty of enthusiasm about most subjects that are put in front of me (something you need if you are going to paint commissioned portraits), but I used to have to be really fussy.
Summary
Joining a portrait painting group is a great way to find subjects and meet and
learn from other artists at the same time. If you can’t get to one,
ask a friend to sit for you or go out armed with a sketch book and/or a
camera with a zoom lense. Most importantly take some time to find a
subject that really interests you. To produce a good portrait you have
to care.
You can also collect photos from magazines. Just photograph the
photos, store them in your pc and then cut and paste elements you like
from different ones to produce entirely made up people. More of that
on the next page.
Copyright Fiona Holt 2024