Quick Portrait Sketch

Hi, my name is Stuart Lockridge. I wanna demonstrate, uh, a, a fun technique. It's just the quickest way I can paint a watercolor portrait. Um, I'll be doing it from imagination rather than any reference material, and I'll be working on the Strathmore plate Bristol 500 3 ply paper. So this, this little video here is just a, a teaser on how fun this paper is to work on.

It's, it's a slick paper. It's great for wiping and pulling out highlights um, I won't get too involved in that. I just, I just wanna show you how the paint handles on this and also show you uh kind of a fun technique of, uh, portrait painting against the dark background. So I'll jump right in. I'm gonna do two quick heads.

I'm gonna put a head right here. And. Don't know what I'll do yet, and I'll put another head here. So I just really loosely fill out the form here. All right.

grab a nice large brush here. I have a size 10. Uh, round Uh A Skoda brush. And there'll be some dry times in here, so we'll get these first washes, these first washes down. So first thing before I uh throw down the paint, I just want to lighten up that pencil marks just so they're ghostly and they're not lifting up into the main colors of paint.

Right. Um, you know, keep in mind I do have, uh, thousands of hours of experience drawing portrait, and figurative work, so, um, this is, this comes fairly easy for me. The top portrait I'm gonna do a, uh, kind of pink fleshy color. I'm gonna get some ochre. And a little rose color and a little white quash mixed into there.

And just go right in. And I'm gonna save a little highlight on the nose. And I'm gonna start rounding out that form a little bit with a little egg form. Just think of it as an egg. That's all.

I don't want to get too carried away though. And I could think of a a bit of a. Colar perhaps just go into a neutral, which is like a cool. And there we go. That's it.

Now, for the lower portrait, I'm gonna let this dry, that first round on that portrait, I'm gonna let that dry. And the second portrait, I'm going to. Attempt a different skin color. Start out with some blue. So you see the way this this watercolor on this paper just kind of slides around a bit.

It's really fun. I'm gonna let that blue set and as this portrait is drawing, I'm just gonna come on and start wiping out some highlights, get a cheek. Get a brow. Here we go. Let that sit.

Go soften that cheek. Here we go. Oh, this portrait here. I'm gonna mark a highlight. OK.

And I'm gonna go right in for some deeper tones. All right, that's going. There's a cover of the background here. All right, we're back at it. I let that set for a few minutes.

Now I'm gonna do a background. On this top portrait. And deciding what to do here, I think I'll just go a black and a red. And a little blue There we go. All right.

I'm gonna just start carving out this portrait as I see it happening. Throwing some hair color, red. Let's try it out. There we go. I thin that out and get a quick little turn on the underside.

And as that's going, I'm gonna just hit these these brows. And just really throw in. Uh, really dark, dark, dark. And bring that dark around. And just like that, I have a little portrait easily once that eye socket dries, I'll drop in the dark, and let's see if we can get this one going.

OK, you're gonna throw in the dark. And then we got a portrait enough. Probably wait a little longer for that to dry. But just want to show you how fast this can happen. Now, with this little tiny brush, grab a small brush and See if I can save that eye.

And this is the beauty of the papers it wipes out. See if we could throw that eye back in there. Then with just a little wash. Lightest of washes. Content that nose.

Like that red nose effect. Tint the cheeks down Well, we got some interesting little portraits there just to show you how quick this uh this paper happens and how how the watercolor kind of skates across it so hope that was hope that was fun and uh they're great kind of almost caricatures so you could take people uh that you see and maybe take a photo or try to work from life and just see how fast this can go. It helps to have a hair dryer on hand that you can just quickly dry this stuff out so you can just keep on keep on moving so. Um, I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for tuning in.