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THE ART OF THE PORTRAIT
I
spent a long time learning how to draw
portraits, starting with the outline of things,
then working my way inward to core features.
There was a strong emphasis on linear aspects
of a portrait where I went to school. Somehow,
that technique never felt quite right for my
temperament, and I often spent a lot of time
trying to figure out how the painters
I admired got such fresh paint effects. At one
point about six years ago, I was totally fed up
with this technique. I picked up my palette
knife and laid in the portrait I was working on,
focusing on color, value and placement, but
did not overly concern myself with the drawing
initially. Somehow, this act led me down the
path to find a technique that suited me better
and took advantage of the things I really
enjoyed in starting a painting but allowed me
to ease into the drawing stage of the painting
a bit later.S TAG E 1: I lay in this first stage very quickly,
but I’m mindful that placement is everything.
There are very minimal drawing marks at this
stage, mostly done with a mix of transparentoxide red and ultramarine blue. I know the tilt
of head will be tricky for me, so I place a plumb
line down the nose just to organize myself a
bit. After this, I immediately start laying in the
darks of the head with my palette knife.STAGE 2: I’m still placing the figure on my
canvas by anchoring myself in the darks with
my transparent oxide red and ultramarine
blue mixture. I’m not drawing too much or
too accurately. I enjoy this stage because
I am using my palette knife, which is this big,
somewhat clumsy tool. It doesn’t allow me to
get too precious too soon.S TAG E 3: Now it’s time for me to put an overall
skin tone and begin that relationship with the
background. This is the stage when I spend
time on what I’d like the color harmony to be
in my painting. I often find that my favorite
paintings are simple color harmonies. For
this painting, I’m going to go for the violets
in her skin and that cool yellow-green in the
background as foils for each other. Again, the
only tool I’ve been using is my palette knife.STAGE 4: This is the most active part of the
painting. I’m trying to get rid of the white
of the panel and create textures that I can
work on top of once this layer is dry. Any
opportunities for me to smear one similar
value into other, I do it! An example of this is
in the neck—the values (but not the colors)
are so close in range, that I decide to combine
them. I do this so I can find areas that are
this delicate much later, when I have more
information to support such hard work.S TAG E 5: This is the final stage of this initial
layer. I know all those palette knife strokes are
going to dry by the time I work on this again,
so I want to tone down the texture in areas I
know I will want a slightly smoother finish.
This is where I use a soft brush to knock down
some of the peaks of paint, and I even blur
places in the head. At this stage, I want a foggy
version of my painting.STAGE 6 : At this point, I’ve let the painting
fully dry. Very lightly, I use a 220-grit sandpaper
to go over the whole painting. This ensuresMia Bergeron
Order out of Chaos
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