Hello Morgan,
Thanks again for an amazing course, I am learning a lot. It teaches me how to approach to a portrait drawing and painting with a clear structure that I was lacking before. This is the course I have been waiting for years. Thanks a lot.
This is my first oil portrait. The value of the ear seems a bit light. But when I squint it reads as a part of shadow family, so I am a bit confused if I should darken its value or it is ok like this.
I tried my best to get the colour of the his shirt right (like in your painting- a bit cooler green). But I couldn't get it right unfortunately. When I mix yellow and black, I get warm green, when I add more blacks to it gets darker, not the cooler. Adding whites didn't help either. Any tips would be useful, thanks.
In real finished painting there are more subtle colour variations and modelling, unfortunately camera flattens it all.
Thanks for your feedback in advance.
This was my first attempt at any type of oil portrait. There are some things I like and some I don't like after letting it sit for a day or two. I'm still struggling with value, edges and how to properly mix flesh tones that are not yellow. But overall I'm happy with it and thank you Morgan for such a thorough guide. Such an amazing course.
You have some incredibly good things happening here, including your drawing that’s holding it together. In spite of the yellow skin it’s still working fairly well. Those of you who are getting too much yellow or pink simply are not adding enough black to the mixture to grey it down. You need to play with all of it to get a more tone. Try to get lost and soft edges in his scarf to finish this off and it will really sing.
You handled your values very well. You showed great control within the shadow areas by not going to light and breaking up the beautiful pattern of dark. I really happy with it. You’re also doing very well with your lights when it comes to the values. If there was one area that I would want you to pay a little more attention to it would be The drawing of the shapes. It comes with practice. You can get more confident by designing those darks so that they create nice light shapes, but that’s just advanced stuff. This is really very well done
Hello everyone, hello Morgan,
i watched through the whole course first and now i am rewatching the videos, while working along digitally and applying it to some of my own reference to get some more practice in.
After I will have finished the course digitally, i´m going to work through it with oils.
I mixed my colors out of the four (or 2) colors, instead of using the color wheel/picker. I think i need to pick a more saturated ketchup to get closer to a alizarin though. No matter how i mixed the colors: i couldn't get close to the orange in the background and the skin tone seems a bit too dull/mat/dead (i don't know exactly how to describe it, i´m just not completely happy with it).
Great course, thanks a lot. Very entertaining and educational.
(i used a grid for the drawing, i just didn't have that layer shown here)
Edit: Added two more paitnings, following the steps layed out in the demo. I gonna work along the 2nd demo now.
And really looking forward to doing the whole course a second time with oils.
Photo on the left and a scan on the right taken at the same time, I did some more modeling on the face and tried to soften the outer edges of the lips as you suggested, Thanks for pointing it out. Let me know if there are any other ways to improve it.
Overall, I think this has some really nice qualities. Your drawing went off in the area of the shapes that make up the eyes sockets. They got too large and too wide, and then it caused his likeness to go off, but there are other areas where you got it Much more accurately. Take the photo and your painting and put them side-by-side and with rapid eye movement back-and-forth just look at the eye area and compare between them and see if you can see where you went off. Learning how to see incorrect is the most important thing You can get out of this but overall you did a great job.
It was a little hard to keep momentum stopping and starting again days later. But here is what I ended up with. I learned from this step by step process as it forced more discipline.
The thing that would help this, the most is for you to clean up all your half tones that are too dark. In the course I talk about keeping your half tones lighter than they appear. I’m afraid you wear too dark with many of them.
I ruined my physical painting when I tried to do the edges but I went in and tried to finish it digitally from photo at an earlier stage.
Not sure if I have softened enough edges.
The gouache didn’t go well for me 😅
Your edges would feel better if they were forming shadow pattern shapes that were more correct to what happens in the photo. Don’t let the pursuit of edges, destroy the graphic shapes that the shadows make.
You've done very well with it. from the photos, I would have to say that you didn't add enough warmth to the shadow family. little more alizarin to the shadows was needed to keep him from looking dead. If I were to work on it, I would also like to see you now take it further with some subtle color vibrations of cools and warms in the light family of his face. But it's set up to take further and you learned the lesson well.
This is challenging. I am just a bit confused about the dark half tones. .... when I squint they seem to fall for me into the shadow area rather than the lights. I did work from a laptop though which consistantly seems to change things. But my black and white printout also darkens the halftones. Does the darks end then at the darkest edge?......The colour vibration is very interesting. I would like to explore that more. Thank you Morgan. It was a precious class. (photographs taken in different lighting.)
I like your brushwork. You have a consistent style working here. It's not lifeless and dull. I like it. simplify the scarf to bolder big shapes of light and it will be a nice complement to the busier areas of the face.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get a better picture of my painting, a lot of the color changes in the lights got lost. I did tickle the painting to death a little bit in certain areas (especially the cheeks) and there are some issues but I started getting to a point where trying to fix things messed it up more than it would help so I called it.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Great course so far. Now that i am familiar with the method, I could probably get a much better result once I come back and redo this painting.
Finished this one up after Christmas and I had the most fun with this portrait in a while. I’m really happy with the result since I’m still new to oil painting and I’m excited what you have to say Morgan!
Great job
! You kept the sculptural quality of the light and didn’t mess it up with reflective lights. Edges could be a little softer in big spots like cheek to offset the firmer edges.
I'm sorry about the reflecting light but , I can painting only at night while the kids are asleep... I lerned a lot from this lesson, although I can see there's much to be desired. It's my 1st portrait using oil, it's on a cardbord with gesso as base.
Did it at 2 sitting, roughly 4-5h.
Thank you!
your first photo shows how you did a good job of separating light from shadow with two obvious patterns. You kind of lost some of that separation with too much lightening of the shadows. but overall it's a good effort.
It’s not what I’d hoped for, but I’ve reached to point of diminishing returns….fixing one thing only to mess up something else. His poor ear. Time to move on and try again.
Wishing everyone A Happy New Year!
This painting was difficult than painting an old man. Particularly transition from shadow to light. Need more painting practice. Thank you for the good teaching though. Because the area where it was not dried did not show well in photo, I attached an angled shot as well. If you see any areas where I should be careful of, I would appreciate it if you could let me know. Thank you.
Good job! just try to keep your values simple in the shadow family and keep them together in a tighter group of values. I quickly pulled them together here in the attachment. I also worked the edges a little more.
Hi Morgan, apologies for being a bad student, I skipped all the assignments and 2x speeded most videos. My nan passed away last month and she left me a little bit of money that I put towards my art education here. This is a photo of my grandad that my wife took at the funeral and I wanted to get the portrait done before Christmas to give to him as a present. I’ve taught myself everything I know about painting up till now and I’m very grateful I'm able to start learning for real. This portrait wouldn’t have been possible without your lessons and I'm incredibly thankful you took the time to share your knowledge with us. I hope to take things a little slower in the new year and go back over everything at a much more reasonable pace. Happy holidays!
Award winning fine artist represented by @legacygalleryart in Scottsdale AZ
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This is part four of a long demonstration breaking down adding color and subtle shapes.
The assignment will be to follow along and post your work here.
Reference in the "Grid drawing" lesson of this course.