PAINTING - expressive portrait

Artist models

This focus study is more about a range of influences as apposed to one particular artist model. Many Contemporary artists are heavily influenced by art styles from throughout modern Art eras like Impressionism, Expressionism and Fauvism. The way they used arbitrary colours and loose brush strokes is still favoured by many artists today.

This Focus study takes aspects of modern art and the post modern art movement of Neo expressionism to bring together a loose brush style with strong layers of colours.

Head to this page to learn more about the History and influences of Modern art and Neo expressionist artists for this study.


At the bottom of the page is a range of examples for this task that show differnt styles and subjects

"Self Portrait 2020"

"Apples"

"Contemplate"

"Pug Life"

FOCUS STUDY Painting

watch the included videos of various artists and how they have done thier works. The more you watch the more techniques and ideas you will get to use on your own work. My video process is below the steps, ensure you watch it for a step by step process.

  1. Select your image to work on, start by outlining roughly the the value areas of dark/mid/light

  2. Prepare your board/canvas with a coat of gesso and a colour wash

  3. Transfer your image to the board

  4. Using your dark hues, apply broad brush strokes to fill in shadow areas*

  5. Using your mid hues add in your next layer of middle values*, continue to build dark values as needed.

  6. Add in background

  7. Using your light Hues add in your Light value areas*

  8. continue to build up areas and define shapes with various size brushes

  9. add final details such as highlights, edges and shadows

*always use large straight brush strokes, each time you put your brush to the palette try to pick up a variation in hue