Portrait Painting Techniques - Toning, Gridding and Skin Tones

How's it going? Andrew here and welcome to another painting video. And in this short video, I'm going to tackle three commonly asked questions when it comes to painting portraits. I get questions all the time through the YouTube comment section and also by email. And I thought I'd take this opportunity with this short video to tackle three really common questions. One that has to do with toning the canvas. Another when it comes to your photographic reference and gridding up your design and transferring that to a canvas. And another one that I get asked a bunch, which is about mixing skin tones. Now this video is going to be more geared towards beginners, but if you're an intermediate or an advanced painter, then there's going to be something in here for you as well. Now let's kick things off with toning the canvas. And if you've been watching my painting videos for a while, then you'll know I don't really like working over a stark white background. I always tend to color the canvas first. I'm doing this for a very specific reason. So let's jump over there into the corner of the studio. Let's have a bit of a chat. Here I have a beautiful fresh 30 by 40 Belgian linen stretcher ready to go for a portrait or a landscape, but it's not quite ready. And I'm going to have to do something with this surface before I begin layering oil paint over the top. You see, if I'm working on a stark white background, something's going to happen as I lay on those initial strokes of color. This is at the top of my tonal range. I can't actually go any lighter than that color. So as I start laying down those strokes, everything's going to appear dark by comparison. I need to be able to register what my tones are doing right from the outset. So I have to achieve something close to a mid-tone. So it's not going to be too dark, it's not going to be too light, but somewhere right in the middle. And then that way, when I'm laying on lighter colors, I'm going to be able to see them very clearly, and also I'm going to be able to see darker colors pretty clearly as well. But there's another reason that we want to do this with a color, is because whatever color I put down on this surface is going to influence whatever I lay down over the top. Imagine when I'm laying down strokes of color, they're almost like tiles. And between, like the grout between those tiles, there's a color showing through. That color can actually influence the way the colors that we're laying over the top can appear. So I'm going to choose something that's nice and warm, something that's going to add a little bit more vibrancy to those skin tones that I'm laying over the top of this. So let's mix up some of that ground color. Now it's super easy to tone your canvas, and this is the exact method that I've been using over the years to get that initial ground color. We're going to start off with this jar here. Now I love these salsa jars because they've got a nice wide base, they don't tip over so easily, and they've got a beautiful wide opening there. Perfect for getting a big priming brush in and out of. So really super handy. Eat more salsa, it'll help you with your painting. And I'm also going to be using Williamsburg Burnt Umber for this, but really it doesn't matter what kind of Burnt Umber you use. This one I happen to like a lot. It's a nice dark brown, really rich, and it's going to add a bit of warmth to that underlying tone. Now first, before we start mixing any of this tone, I need to get some gloves here to just protect my hands. Generally, I don't like getting paint, medium, or solvent on my fingers. I want to be around painting for a long time, and if you expose yourself to any harmful substances, it can accumulate over time, and it's generally bad news. So a pair of rubber gloves takes care of that, keeps everything nice and clean. Now first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to just pour a dash of my Pure Gum Turpentine into that jar, just a little bit. We're only doing one canvas, so about that much should do. So I've got about a centimeter in the bottom of that jar. I love these skull bottles. I keep mediums and solvents and oils and stuff in these. They're just so cool to have in the studio, but in this one, I've got Winsor & Newton Liquin Original. Now, it can separate in the bottle over time, so I just make sure before I start using that, shake it up, make sure it's one nice homogenous mixture, and then we're going to just add a touch of this to our solvent. Now just a little bit of that Liquin Original into that Pure Gum Turps is all I'm going to need, just a dash. So it's probably about a third or a quarter of the amount of turpentine that I had. So so far, we've probably got about, let's say, two parts turps, one part Liquin. And now we're just going to add a touch of that burnt umber paint, and just a little. And now all I have to do is mix this all together. So in order to do this, I'm actually going to use a little trick here. I'm going to grab a bolt and a washer, maybe even another washer. And then as I shake this up, those metal bits of hardware are going to scrape the bottom of the jar and make sure this is one nice, even mixture. So rather than shaking this violently, because that hardware can actually break the jar, what I'm going to do is just swish this gently in a circular fashion, just so that hardware can continually scrape the bottom of the jar, making this a really nice, even mixture. I just do this for a little while until I feel it's about ready. I can check from time to time, but about a couple of minutes, that should be ready to go. Looks a little bit thick, so I'm going to add a touch more Pure Gum Turps to thin out the mixture a little bit more. We'll just shake it up again, gently. Now that's perfect. I think that'll work really, really well. Now, I'm not using a very expensive brush at all for this process. I'm going to be using this very cheap. In fact, this only cost me three bucks, a very cheap brush to spread this color around. The only thing I've got to be careful for is this is going to drop some of these fibers. And I want to make sure I pick these up before that tonal layer dries. Otherwise, I'm going to have a bigger problem to contend with down the track. But again, very cheap brush. Fantastic for spreading this color around. And what I'm going to try to do is get as even a coat as possible. Nice broad strokes. Try to push that paint as far as it will go before reloading that brush. I'll notice those marks are no longer effective out towards the end of that mixture. So as I brush along, it's no longer really depositing paint. That's how I know to get back in there, get a little bit more out onto that brush. Now, I should note that it's probably best to do this in either a large open space like I'm in now or a well-ventilated studio space. This can be a bit on the nose. So if you're sensitive, then maybe do this outside. The trick here is to get as even a coat as possible, ensuring that I cover all of that white, but also making sure that I don't have any really thick areas of paint. Now, fortunately, it's a very fluid mixture, so it's going to level out really nicely. Once I've done that, I'm going to go back with a rag and wipe off some of this excess paint. This reveals a little bit of a stain, and where once we had a white canvas, now we've got this beautiful brown-toned canvas. Now, whilst I'm not too worried about any smears or marks that are a little bit lighter, they can be a bit distracting, so I just go through and just rub back gently, not pressing too hard, and just remove as much of that excess paint as possible, and I think we're ready to start painting on. Now, the reason why I want to get that excess off that canvas is because this is actually going to affect whatever I put down over the top in terms of drying time. If I had really thick paint here and then I started to layer over the top of that, it might lead to problems down the track. So having a nice, thin, ground color here, that's the ticket. The other thing as well is by keeping this nice and thin, due to the nature of the materials we're using, it's going to dry really fast. In fact, I'm ready to start painting right now. So now we've finished our tonal wash of the canvas, or linen in this case, and you'll notice that it's pretty far from that stark white background that we had to begin with. Now, when I'm blocking in my portrait, this means that my lighter marks are going to show up and they're going to register against this darker color, but also it's not so dark that I'm going to lose my shadows, so they're going to show up as well. It's somewhere near the middle, a mid-tone, if you will. But the color here I absolutely love. That burnt umber is going to add to the richness of whatever colors I lay down over the top, and it's going to provide that initial warmth that's really going to help me with my skin tones, which we're also going to talk about in this video. Now that we've toned our canvas, let's talk about the next part, which is gridding up. Now I'm going to use a grid on my photographic reference and then transfer this directly to this canvas here. Now before you give me a hard time about gridding up the photograph, bear in mind I've got a lot of beginners watching and a lot of people emailing me regularly about how to accurately get their portrait onto that surface. Sometimes we don't have the drawing ability to be able to do that accurately, and it can be quite intimidating if you're just starting out and you try to draw this up freehand. For me personally, I feel it's much more important to get stuck into it and have a go and get started painting and just remove that limitation by just gridding up, and then that way you can start to get a bit of a roll and build up your confidence a little bit. And then later down the track, maybe have a go at drawing something freehand. And that's why, incidentally, in my new portrait painting tutorial, I've included both systems. I'm going to show you how I do this freehand, I'm also going to show you using this grid method. Now the most important aspect of this process is proportion. I need to make sure the proportion of my photographic reference is exactly that of the canvas. So the width to height needs to be exactly the same. That way, I'm going to ensure that I don't end up with something stretched horizontally or vertically. So proportion is key. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to join the two corners and somewhere roughly in the middle, I'm going to make a dash and then come across here to the other side and make a corresponding dash. Now where those two intersect, I know that's going to be exactly in the middle of my canvas. Now a really good tool for this process is a spirit level. This means that I can hold this up to the canvas and find that level perfectly. Now I know I've got perfect level horizontals here, so if I hold that up there, I know I'm going to get a perfect horizontal right in the middle by just lining up that bubble and just simply draft across. And we've got our first line. Now we need to do the same vertically. Now I'm using the same paint that I used to tone the canvas to apply these vertical and horizontal marks. Now that I have it divided into four, I'm going to divide each of these into four again by connecting the corners. Now I have this canvas divided into 16 and I'll divide each of these into another four squares before attempting to draw out my portrait. And I'm going to do a much finer, smaller grid here right in the area where the face is going to go. And that's going to help me achieve a more accurate likeness within the portrait painting. Using a grid is not exactly my preferred method. I do like to draw it up by freehand, but this is just to help anybody out there who is wanting to have a go and you're feeling intimidated, maybe limited by your drawing ability. It's more important to just get stuck into it. But if I can encourage you to try to draw this up freehand, you're going to see some real major benefits to that practice. First, you're going to see that this is going to improve your hand-eye coordination. The more you're pushing at that frontier of your ability, the more you're reinforcing those neural pathways and you're going to start to see dramatic improvements in your ability. So just keep pushing yourself, practice makes perfect. The second big reason and a benefit to actually having to go drawing this yourself is you have the freedom and the potential to change the design. Normally, when you're gridding up your photograph, you're locked in to what your photograph is showing you. But if you wanted to make a change there by drawing it freehand, you're a little bit more inclined to do so. The other thing is your camera is going to have errors built into it. The camera lens doesn't exactly see the way our eyes see. So we can copy in to our painting the errors that are inherent in the photographic process. One of these things is that distance between the subject and the lens. It can seem quite distorted the closer the subject is to the lens. So a little trick if you're still going to use your photographic reference and grid that up is to shoot from a distance. Let me just give you an example. If I came right up to you here, you'll notice how my face is a little bit distorted and you can see that maybe my features are a little bit blown out of proportion. But if I come away, then you can see it sort of levels everything out and evens out all of my features and it looks a little bit more proportional, well, hopefully. So it's good to get about two to three meters away from your subject. But anyway, back to the benefits of drawing this thing freehand. The last thing is having some satisfaction and a sense of achievement of actually having drawn this by hand yourself. That's enormous and can't really be replaced by anything. That said, if you're a beginner and you want to get stuck into this, ignore everything I just said and jump in. Use a grid. Super easy and really fun. So now that we've talked about gridding up, let's get into mixing some skin tones. Now, I get loads of requests for this one. So let me show you some simple methods to make skin tones. But before we get started, you may have already noticed that the painting that we're talking about here, this one of Stephanie that you can see behind me, is very reminiscent of an old master. In fact, it's a tribute to John William Waterhouse's Soul of the Rose. This painting is an absolute favorite of mine and John William Waterhouse is a hero. I just love the way he paints. I love his use of color and his use of composition and how he uses that composition to tell a story. So for some time, I've wanted to make a tribute to that painting by creating my own version and I thought it'd be a really cool idea to create a palette that was very reminiscent of the 19th century colors that a lot of those artists back at that time would have been using. So let me grab my palette and drag it over here and talk to you about some of these colors. Now, if you didn't see the last video on color mixing, check that out. I explain a little bit more about this rig that you're seeing here. But I'll assume that you've already watched that. So I'm going to jump straight into the palette of skin tone colors here and some of the others that I used for that painting. I try to keep things as organized as possible when I'm approaching color. This just helps me achieve more predictable results and keeps me really well organized in the studio. So I'm going to lay out my colors down one edge of this palette, keeping a nice open mixing space over here to the right. I'm going to start things off with Burnt Umber. And again, here, I'm going to use this Williamsburg Burnt Umber, a really nice dark color. Next, I've got Transparent Yellow Oxide. This is an iron oxide and it's really fantastic for some glazes. But I'll even use this in the initial block in of the portrait to achieve some nice yellow notes in the skin. And it can also be really good for adding warmth. Now there's been a little bit of discussion on my channel about whites, in particular zinc white versus titanium versus lead white. Now I got rid of the zinc and I found that that's not actually considered archival and it's bad for the longevity of our oil painting. So I got that out of the studio and now I'm moving over more to lead white. There have been a lot of people who have been asking me, wanting to try lead white, where to find a really good source for that. I absolutely love this lead white made by Blue Ridge Oils. And this here is called Kremnitz White, but it's basic lead carbonate. That's the chemical name of what's inside this tube. So if you're looking for a good lead white, you can find this online. Fantastic color. Next, I've got Cadmium Lemon and this is a fantastic yellow color. Very high chroma. A little bit goes a long way. And now I've got this punchy red color here made by Blue Ridge as well. This is Cadmium Red Light. This is going to really help me add the flush to the cheeks as well as get some of that temperature coming out of areas like the lips. Very handy for skin tones. Now if I want some warmth to come through those skin tones that's a little bit more delicate, then I'm going to use this Permanent Crimson. This is far more transparent than that Cadmium Red Light and this is going to be fantastic for just tinting some delicate skin tones. Now Manganese Violet is not a color I use very often, but this is a fantastic color for again delicately tinting some of those skin tones. This mixes beautifully into some blue colors to create some more cool transitions. Really nice for ambient light when mixed with Ultramarine Blue and that Cremnitz White. This would have been a color that they used in the 19th century and I'm sure Waterhouse even had that on his palette. Now of course one of my favorite colors, Ultramarine Blue, they would have used this a bunch back in the day. I'm going to use this a lot for my shadows but also in achieving some of that ambient skylight. And a bit of Cobalt Blue, a much warmer color than that Ultramarine and this is going to be really useful. Because I've got so much foliage in this painting, I'm going to be using this Cobalt Blue mixed with my Cadmium Lemon to create some of those leafy greens. Now I've been experimenting with a few different brands in the studio and I'm going to be bringing you the results of that experimentation very, very soon. My goal here is to just make that as accessible for you as possible. Some people were having trouble getting their hands on the last brand that I was using and a few that I've been trying are a little bit more universally available but I've been enjoying using Roubleve here as well. And this Chromium Green Oxide I've used for some of the skin tones in my recent portraits but also just in achieving some of that really nice green of the foliage in the background. Now Chromium Green Oxide would have been a color that they used back in the 19th century and again I'm very certain that this would have featured on Waterhouse's palette so of course it gets a spot on my palette here. Now the cool thing about Roubleve is that there is no stabilizer in there, it's just pure pigment and oil. This means that it can separate a little bit and the oil may run out but you can mix that back into the paint itself if that bothers you. Now I try to stick to this order when I'm painting a portrait even though the colors might change slightly from painting to painting. But having some sort of order and organization here leads to better color mixing. Now let me show you a couple of clips from my latest tutorial on painting portraits that features this painting of Stephanie that you see behind me. And from here you'll be able to see the blocking in section of that painting and how I mix some of these basic skin tones. Just quickly before we get into that excerpt from the DVD I'll just show you a couple of clips here of how I transferred using that grid and drafted in the face of my model. Here this is Stephanie in a rose garden and I've added a much smaller finer grid for the area around the face to create more of a likeness. Now I want to create a little bit more of a tonal dynamic within this portrait before I start laying in color. I'm going for a monochromatic approach here so I'm adding in some shadows just here below the eyebrow and also around the face and in the background. And this is just using the same color that I used for the tonal wash. Again I'm trying to keep this paint nice and thin. I don't want any thickness here at all and this is going to keep my options open for the later stages of the painting as I begin to layer on more brushwork. Now I love this process because we can begin to build up a tonal dynamic really quickly. Again knocking in some of these darker shadows but also lifting out some of the highlights. And here I'm just using pure gum turpentine. The ground color has not dried completely and this allows me to mobilize some of this paint and rub through to that bare linen underneath to reveal a lighter highlight. Now I have to take a really slow approach here and just go piece by piece so that I don't create a whole mess but it helps having some clean rags. I'm just using that rag on the end of my finger to rub through to reveal some of that white canvas and most of that color can come off if you work it enough and mobilize enough of it with the solvent. So again I'm using just pure gum turpentine and that tonal layer is still a little bit wet so it allows me to mobilize it. And again for those deeper shadows I just lay in some more of that background tonal color. Again making sure that I don't have any ridgelines within my brushwork that are going to form a distraction for later on in the process. I love taking this tonal approach to the portrait and really firmly establishing the composition. Once this layer is completely dry I'm then ready to lay down some of that skin tone color and this really does help me with the blocking in process. Now let's just jump straight into it and begin mixing in some of these skin tones. Like in our previous demonstration I'm going to start mixing some skin tones for the forehead and the temple area. We're going to tentatively just approach this very complicated mix of colors by starting with the most simple basic things first. I began here with burnt umber and now I've mixed in a little bit of that lead white. I can increase the heat with that Perylene Crimson and to create more flow with the mixture I'm using Liquin Original. I'll make one mark and then judge where this color needs to go. It's difficult to tell at this stage in the initial marks that we're making here on the surface just how cool or warm our tones need to be. The main aim of the game here though is to just map out the face as quickly as possible. So I decide to mix in some more of that burnt umber and lead white but now I've introduced transparent yellow oxide and some more of that Perylene Crimson to just get more heat and also have a lighter tone. This I'll apply to the front of the face just above that eyebrow between the eyes. Now I'm using quite a large bristle wedge brush here to apply these marks and this is great for creating some smoothness but also covering a lot of ground quickly. Now I don't want to blend too much between my strokes here. I want some distinct brushwork so the bristle dagger is going to really lend itself to this type of application. To increase the heat I then add more Perylene Crimson and now a touch of Cadmium Red. This will be great for that side of the cheek and notice how much warmer and pinker this tone is. I'm going to move around the face in this fashion in zones and then bring these zones together and marry them up with one another so that we get this even transition of colors. Now I can only go so far with the brush before I have to go back and reload so I'm always on the lookout for where the brush starts to trail off and my mark making is no longer effective. Now I've just picked up a little bit of that Ultramarine Blue and a touch of Cobalt there. This will create some more cool skin tones and notice how that cool reacts so nicely with that warm pink tone. As I smooth some of these marks out I get this nice gradation effect from the temple down into the cheek. I'll use this same cool color right here just below the eye above the cheek. Already with these initial marks I'm taking into account my lighting dynamic taking note that that cool light from the ambient sky above is shining down and casting this really nice cool glow on this side of the face. I'm only using one brush for this initial part of the block in. I'll keep going for a while before I need to change brushes or add another one. Now also with this part I'm going to be using Liquin Original and I'm going to be layering over this initial block in layer. Some of these colors on the front of the face are not going to be catching as much of that ambient skylight and so they're going to show up a little bit more yellow and even turn towards the green side. Now let's mix up a little bit of color here for the eyes and areas around the eyeball just underneath the eyebrow ridge. This part of the face is going to be pretty dark so I'm going to start off with my ultramarine blue and burnt umber combination. You can see here that I've mixed in my manganese violet perylene crimson and transparent yellow oxide and now I have a very warm dark color for the basis of that shadow. I try to keep things pretty simple at this block in stage and you can see I'm using a pretty big brush. I'm trying not to get detailed at all. In fact it is a struggle to try to avoid over emphasizing and really rendering each individual form. I'm trying to see the bigger picture here and what's happening with my broad general shapes. From here I can get more detailed in the subsequent layers that we're adding over the top. Now I've introduced a second brush and I'm alternating between this shadow color here on one brush and this lighter color here with the bristle dagger and alternating between these two helps me keep cleaner colors. When I observe my photographic reference I'm looking for those hints in terms of what's warmer and what's cooler, what's lighter and what's darker. Sometimes it's not so obvious so I have to go a little bit above and beyond here and really try to work out what it is I'm seeing. Here what I'm trying to do is establish the three-dimensional form and get this form correct before going over the top with any details. I'm enjoying the way these colors blend in with one another. To create more tone in areas around the crease and the nostrils I'll simply draw that straight edge, the blade part of that bristle dagger and then blend the stroke across into the mass of the cheek creating some more softness in this area. Some of the shadows that you can see in the reference material are quite soft indeed. They're not really harsh lines. I'm not seeing anything with real sharpness to it or really strong contrast so if I need to drop the tone I might just touch the surface with the brush and then just work this back in to other wet areas of paint. Now painting alla prima or wet and wet like I'm doing here is my preferred method for the block-in. I'll go ahead and get everything mapped out in a very loose and general way and then layer those finer details over the top. Now I'm noticing with this particular lighting scenario that some of my shadows are pretty warm and this is contrasting nicely with that cool reflected light from the sky above. Now the color here in the shadows is given that warmth from the Perylene Crimson and Cadmium Red. I'm also using plenty of that Transparent Yellow Oxide in some of these areas. I work right up to the boundary of the face. I'll come in and recut the background against this lighter skin tone that I'm applying here to just establish the face as a shape standing proud of that background. What I do is I work in these zones and then bring these edges together. Now we've talked a lot about skin tones and even the lighting scenario that's going on here but let's take a closer look now at some cooler colors like our Cobalts and Ultramarines and mix these into the face and talk about how these colors relate to the overall picture. Now Ultramarine I mentioned while we're discussing the palette is going to be used quite a lot in my skin tones and this needs to be toned with the other colors like the Lead White as well as that Perylene Crimson and Transparent Yellow Oxide. The Ultramarine by just adding a touch of this to our mixes will cool those mixtures down. Similarly the Cobalt Blue and Chromium Green Oxide will also work really well in some of these areas. Now a little bit of this goes a long way and I'll apply some of this color into the jaw line right here where the cheeks might turn downward slightly and they're still catching a little bit of that ambient skylight from above but we're not quite into the warm shadow yet. This color here will help us really define the overall shape and volume of the face but also it's going to be a great underlying color for us to layer back over the top of. So I imagine this color is going to be showing through some gaps in the brushwork that's going to be put on in subsequent layers. It does seem a little bit out of place at first but as we begin to work this back in and up into the blush and the cheeks it starts to make more sense. I'm going to begin adding some of these warmer shadow colors here now. This one just below the lip I notice trails off into the chin. Using the broad flat side of the brush I work this back into that bluer skin tone rounding out the form of the chin. I'm really enjoying the way that these colors are working with one another. I like the way that warmth seems to play off against the light. I should note here that I'm keeping my colors quite subdued. I'm noticing a little bit of saturation coming through in my photographic reference but I'm not going to the height of that saturation just yet. I control this dynamic just like I control my tones saving my tonal best for last but at the same time I'm saving my color best for last. So I gradually push myself up towards that boundary of the most saturated notes right at the end of the process. So some of this saturation would occur in areas like the lips for instance where we would have the most intense reds in the face and we're going to talk about the lips shortly but first I'm just going to blend in a slight shadow here where the face meets that hairline just at the side of the temple and then sweeps back into the ear. This is ultramarine blue with burnt umber and if I just bleed that edge across I can start to create more softness there. Now for the lips we're going to need more saturation indeed but not going all the way so I'm using that cadmium red, perylene crimson as well as some manganese violet. I'll desaturate this with a touch of ultramarine blue and I might even get into that burnt umber as well. Now this makes a very hot almost burgundy color and I'll reserve this color for the top lip. Now notice the control that we can get with this brush depending on how I hold that handle and how it engages the surface of the linen. I can get some pretty sharp lines indeed and really taper them out. It's perfect for creating shapes like the lips. I'll go back and rework the edge with some of that skin tone and bring it down to meet this. I can always go back and clean up the shape with a smaller flat bristle brush. Now for the bottom lip that's going to be catching more of the skylight we're going to increase the temperature here by mixing in more perylene crimson and more cadmium red and notice the saturation coming through here in this color. We might need to lighten this a touch though so I'll make sure I've got plenty of that lead white in here as well. I'm going to switch over to this smaller filbert bristle brush now and establish this lip that's catching some of that ambient light. I'm noticing that the top lip is obviously different than that bottom lip so here I want to play up what those differences are. I'm noticing not only is it lighter in tone it's slightly cooler in places so I need to be careful with some of this heat that's coming through with those reds. I can go overboard with this. Now I lay in a few strokes at a time and then I go back and readjust. Now I still have my bristle dagger brush handy to go back and rework some of that skin tone. Again just working edge to edge and paying attention to my zones. Now with some of those shadow colors we were talking about earlier I drop the tone again with more burnt umber and ultramarine blue and begin to knock in the shadow just under the chin here at the lead edge of the neck. I decide to change the shape of the neck here slightly and just bring it in a touch. When wiping some of that paint away in the initial tonal underpainting I might have gotten carried away and allowed this line to creep too far forward giving Stephanie too much neck here. I re-establish the darker shadow just at the front of the chin that rounds out that form a little bit further and then I can go back and rework along that edge working some of that color back up into the cheek creating more softness in the form. Now here with the eyelashes I'm not going to worry too much about detail but just establish a main dark shape. Then I can go back and correct this later and break it up into some finer pieces but while I've got some of this shadow color I'll work it into some of these areas around the nostrils and just above that top lip. Now you just saw a short excerpt from my tutorial on painting portraits and you can find the full version on my website at andrewtichler.com. And this here is what the final painting looks like so if you want to find out more about how I created this then check out that tutorial. So let's just recap what we've talked about in this video. If you're contending with a stark white canvas then try giving it a tonal wash first. This will really help you achieve that mid-tone like we've talked about and if you're painting a portrait that color is going to add a really nice warm flush to those skin tones. And again if you're a beginner and you're not quite happy with your drawing ability but you want to get stuck into painting a portrait then use a grid and make sure that the grid on your canvas corresponds to the grid in your photographic reference material that way the two are going to match and you're going to get an accurate representation of what you're trying to paint. Now if you want more information on how I paint portraits then make sure you check out my latest tutorial called Painting Portraits on my website. It's available now. You'll find that link in the description down below. Now in this tutorial I've got not one but two full painting demonstrations where I show you right from the very beginning of the process to those final detail marks. We're going to paint this painting of Stephanie that you see behind me but also a painting of Riri by the Coast and these two models have slightly different skin complexions and hair types as well as different lighting scenarios within those compositions. These are really comprehensive painting tutorials. I know you're going to get a lot out of it so make sure you check that out. Again link is in the description down below and for a limited time you can get 10% off your purchase by putting in portraits10 into that discount code box. Again all that information you'll find linked in that description down below. Now I really hope that you've enjoyed this video. You've come away with a new technique and if you liked it then please hit that like button for me and make sure you subscribe to this channel if you want to see more painting videos just like this one. As always you can find me on Instagram and Facebook but most important make sure you subscribe through my website at andrewtishler.com. I'm in regular touch with my subscribers there and I look forward to talking to you again soon.