Drawing & Painting Portraits in Watercolour

Portraits are timeless and enthralling, and a discipline to which many artists aspire. Experienced artist David Thomas demonstrates how to use watercolour, pencil and charcoal to produce rewarding results in your portrait work. This book will show you how to fill your paintings with life and character, and explain clearly how to build your sketches up into more developed drawn artwork, and from there to inspiring watercolour portraits.

Learn to use watercolour, pencil and charcoal to produce fresh and approachable portraits invested with life and character.

• Five step-by-step portrait demonstrations
• Information on design, composition and lighting
• Close-up exploration of eyes, hands and hair to help you perfect your portraits

Book Contents

Introduction 6
Materials 8
Design 14
Composition 16
Proportion 20
Pose 24
Lighting 30
Backgrounds 34
Using line 38
Sketching 40

Drawing from life 42
Drawing from photographs 44
Drawing with pencil 48
Using charcoal 52
Drawing with charcoal 54

Using watercolour 58
Watercolour painting techniques 60
Other useful techniques 66
Colour and tone 68

Painting from life 72
Painting from photographs 74
Perfecting your portraits 82

Hair 84
Eyes and hands 86
Age 88

The portraits 90
Alexander 92
Mother and baby 102
Jilly 114

Afterword 126
Index 128