How to Paint a Caravaggio Style Face

Hi, my name is Antonis and I'm the painter in this video. Today you will see me painting Medusa, a very famous painting originally a work by Caravaggio and this is a very exciting study for me because not only I will get to paint the expression, this very intimidating expression of Medusa, but also it will give me the chance to explore more the abilities of the material, of oil painting and share with you my tips and parts of the process. So I hope you are healthy and well and as you already see I've already started by preparing a wood panel with an acrylic gesso in this case and then I've painted the whole thing with this rich dark brownish red color that is going to help me so much when I will further on paint the shadows and the lights. So after transferring my drawing on this panel I've started by of course painting the background with this greenish brownish color along of course with the shadow cast by the head and the hair of Medusa and then I proceed with of course painting the snakes. So in order to do this I will first paint the shadows of the snakes, the less the areas of the snakes that get the less light, I will define their shape and form and later on I will continue with painting the lights on the bodies and heads of the snakes. So I'm using oil of course as my medium and I have to tell you that on these first early stages of oil I'm just using the color as it comes from my tube and I thin it down solely with turpentine oil. So I want to focus primarily on how I've painted the face of Medusa and here you already see that I start this painting by painting and defining the shapes of the shadows on her face. Here I'm using a color that is black along with some brown and with a brush that is very dry let's say it's not very too much loaded I will define a little bit and explore the areas where the head gets the most of the shadows. So of course I have painted with a darker color the eyes and eyebrows, the nostrils of Medusa and little by little without any stress I will try to define these shapes of shadow and of course the shapes on her face that will receive the light. Now another technique at this point is to paint this not with oil but with tempera and later on continue proceed with oil. I've decided to paint this directly by using oil as my medium and you see how nicely this dry almost brush behaves, how it spreads the color in the areas that need to be defined and this is because it contains just the oil coming with the tube. I haven't added any extra linseed oil let's say on my palette at this point. You see how directly at this point we can have a very nice idea of the face of Medusa and after I'm done with this I'm ready to proceed with actually painting and adding color on her face. Now many people, me included, have studied the work of Caravaggio and a technique that is commonly accepted as his technique is that firstly he does some griselle, building the volume of the head just by using gray tones, black and white and then after having finished this griselle, this black and white painting he goes over with thinner layers of oil painting and adds some color. I wanted to explore painting this study by not using the griselle this time but by directly proceeding with adding colored shapes, colored forms without having before painted in gray. So here at this stage which is a very very important stage in painting I will start by working from the most dark areas of the face, the areas that receive the shadows let's say and I will do some application of the color in those areas according of course to my reference photo, according to the original painting of Caravaggio that I studied and I really don't worry too much about the areas that receive light, I just want to do some blending between the darkest shapes that I have painted such as the eyebrows and facial features or the areas of the head that receive the most shadows, some blending there and some application of color in a way that later on when I will add further more lighted areas they will be blended. You will see more on the video as we get there. Notice here that I'm creating on my palette a color that is brown grayish mostly and a color that is more more fleshy let's say I'm using a yellow ochre some a little bit of titanium white for the color that is on the nose here and on the upper part of the forehead and by applying this color and then spreading it with my brush I want to do the very first depiction of the face of Medusa. So this might seem a very chaotic process for many of you but when you are in the studio and you are about to paint it's nothing too intimidating it has to be a process of exploration let's say and by guessing what kind of you know the next step will be. So here after I see how nicely I've painted the left the right part of her face the most shadowy part of the face I'm okay with that I will leave it to rest so now gradually proceed with painting and adding more light in a way that will allow me to to having a nice smooth blend on the areas that are more dark. So when I'm satisfied with that having some basic blend on a lower tone key let's say on the lower the less bright tones of the face now I proceed as you see by adding some very powerful lights on the on her face so I'm creating colors that consists primarily from from titanium white some cadmium yellow a little bit of cadmium red. I also have some other paddles on my palette that are a little bit more cold like colors created with titanium white a little bit of black to bring it down in its saturation and with this more cold colors that are also a little bit darker in tone I will paint some areas that do not don't seem to be as as warm the skin can be can have warmer tones and colder cooler tones so this is something we have to to take under consideration when we paint the face it's not all the same so you see these greenish colors on the on her forehead and under her eyebrow I want to address these issues see how the area on the nose becomes a little bit more pinkish so let me just say that of course it does seem messy at this point but oil color is so much about manipulating the color and moving the color here and there it's so much different the the idea behind the process of oil painting it's so much different than water watercolor painting or tempera painting so here as I have applied these messy let's say colors on her face and now I'm ready to to blend them with by the use of this almost empty brush this completely dry brush that will help me manipulate the color move it here and there blend it in a way that makes sense now this is a process that it's it's just a matter of experience it's just a matter of it's just a matter of practice and acquiring a relationship with the material and the brushes how they behave how they move around etc and no matter if you have the best teacher in the world if you don't acquire this experience by practicing you painting with oil colors no teacher can ever teach you that oil painting is as I said a matter of moving the color around and according to how the painter moves this the color around and manipulates the color the painting gets some extra charm we have each painter has its own signature in doing this remember how different the works of Rembrandt let's say is to the work of Vermeer or you know to the work of Rubens and all the others it's a matter of personal style and there are so many ways to do this with oil color that it's truly amazing so after I have done a very first basic blending on her face I see according to my reference photo that I need to to proceed further and go even brighter in my tones so again I will do the same thing I will apply roughly some colors on her face you see how I play around with more warm more pinkish more yellowy colors according to the areas that I need to paint I will apply this color and then it's a matter again as I said of manipulating this color blending this color and using brushes as you see that will help me do this so since I have a thick color the color I have previously applied is relatively thick on her face I will use an almost dry brush an empty brush that I will manipulate the color and move the color around in a way that will blend it and I wipe the excess color that accumulates on the brush on a piece of cloth and you see that already already on the part of the forehead this looks very very nice so generally what I'm doing is like applying color and then moving the color around I don't want the color to become too muddy this is a great danger when we paint with oils sometimes we add and add color and this color interacts with the underneath color that is not yet dry and becomes muddy and it doesn't do anything to it it's just it's just bad so if we get into that point where the color becomes difficult to to blend to to move around then it's time for for us to stop and let the painting rest for a couple of days the upper layers of the oil to dry and then we proceed again with with painting on a dry surface again here at this point I find that I can still manipulate the color and I can still work on this and you see how I'm using the brush to just move the color around now this is a very very important concept when we paint in oils but it's just a matter of moving the color this is something we have to to really understand and this will help us achieve what we really want when we paint in oils so if you have to take something from this video is this how we apply the color and then by use of dry brushes or by use of less dry brushes or you know we will achieve the effect that we want to achieve if you want to find more you can visit my page on patreon.com painting the light and I really want to thank all of you for your beautiful comments here on youtube also I want to thank my patreon supporters without your help I couldn't be able to produce these videos so a big thank you and I'm so glad these videos here and on patreon are so helpful to you and as many people tell me they inspire them and offer solutions on their painting journey so thank you so much but on the face of Medusa here you see this color manipulation how I keep adding some brighter colors on her face and how then I am moving them around I get a different effect when the color next to a brighter color is and underneath is still wet it's it gives me a specific type of blending and I get another type of blending if the color is not wet but it's dry and then on top of this dry color I will add some wet color and spread it around it will give me a completely different result these are as I said matter of experience and matter of you know practice so the more I paint with oils the more amazed I am by what this medium can do and although I am you know a tempera guy I would say tempera painting mostly I truly enjoy painting with oils see at this point how it already has this feeling of oiliness let's say an effect that no tempera painting can achieve this so characteristic baroque-ish let's say style of painting is already here and what remains is to paint the to do some further blending of course and then finishing with painting the eyes and the mouth of course this is a study not painting in vivo let's say I don't have the actual face I don't have the actual painting of Caravaggio next to me so although my reference photo is of high resolution I still have to improvise and I still have to imagine and definitely I don't claim that this is the technique of Caravaggio specifically it must have been something very similar but I don't really care in this video and in general in this channel to provide you know specific recipes about these master painters and how they painted what they painted I'm pretty sure that they experimented themselves and not all of their paintings are painted in the same way of course nobody was there I mean the people were not there when these masters painted the masterpieces to give us details unfortunately so we have some scientific of course evidence of their process but overall we have to improvise and we have to somehow guess what their technique was and even so it doesn't really matter because each painter has his or her her own muscle and nervous system and it doesn't really matter it's pointless to you know to copy them I mean copying the masterpieces is a great exercise and we we learn so much out of this but we copy them and we study these painters for a reason because mostly we want to improve our skills and then applying these learned skills on our own personal work if these skills these techniques will help us express ourselves better I hope this makes sense and this is the point of me painting these studies to to improve to get some experience on the manipulation of the color here on how the materials behave and then apply this experience on my own personal work I'm pretty sure if I would do this study right next to the original painting my approach might be slightly different although I'm pretty happy with how this study comes along and let me just tell you that every time I do these studies on masters how truly amazed I am by by their mastery it's just unbelievable how their work reflects their serious approach on painting how they how they give every all their concentration on the details and how each and every brushstroke has a meaning this is very very important and it's a great lesson for for us when we paint to really give all our attention even to areas that are not as spectacular or important for the subject matter so little by little this painting this phase comes to its conclusion I can do some corrections as you see here I'm going back back and forth to correct the shapes of the light he in the process of doing this I'm using these synthetic brushes that are very suitable for acrylics they are not very hard to paint with they are not you know thick and the brush is not very thick and brush but hard but it's soft and on the process of painting I just break these brushes especially when I'm using a brush dry to move the color around here and there I just break its hairs and yeah but as I say I will do anything that makes sense in order to achieve the desired effect so I would definitely encourage you to study the old masters especially if you don't have any you know official academic studies the best way to learn painting is by by studying the work and copying their work it's we learn so much on from their work I regret not doing more of these studies when I was younger and I also regret not working more on this on this medium on oil painting but it's never too late and I'm really excited to do this in these latest years see here how I'm using this dry brush to move the color around a little bit make sure when you paint this or a face like this to not you know to not as I say smear the color too much and you know the the teachers in our school of arts used to tell us to just blend the color on the palette and then and then apply it already blended on the painting here I follow this other direction I apply the color in the painting and then I I blend it but I'm I'm very very careful to not blend it excessively in a way that will create this bad or bad effect that is very very typical in many in many oil paintings now I'm ready to proceed with painting the area of the eyes here I'm observing very very carefully my reference photo and I want to see how let's say bright the the white part of the eyes is this grayish color you see the a tiny reflection on the right part of the eye that is very very important and then these highlights in the eye that are extremely powerful it's you know it just transforms the whole painting when I add these highlights and my preoccupation here is to having painted everything underneath these highlights in their correct tone the correct value as so that I will have the desired contrast between the highlight and the underneath the darker parts of the eye you see how nicely this is reflection works on the darker iris and the darker gray part of the eye it's just unbelievable and in the eyebrows you saw that with just a tiny few brushstrokes I give this sense of the eyebrows without adding too much detail the same goes with painting the mouth and the teeth I add some color according to how I see it and then I move the color around here and to in order to make it more convincing and more nice some final corrections and of course this is nothing like the original I'm pretty sure but I'm happy with the result and it does look very as I said the baroque style baroque-ish and this is okay with again thank you so much for being here I hope this video was of some inspiration to you and you got some tips and ideas of how you can paint a face in this style starting from the shadows and gradually building the light and the volume on the face I hope this was helpful as I said find and check my page on patreon.com where you can find lessons on several styles of painting and really feel free to comment here and see tell me anything you want about this video or your painting journey so again thank you so much this head looks really really powerful and it's amazing how Caravaggio conceived it in the first place I'm amazed by that so be healthy, be creative and I will see you soon with another video thank you, bye!