Winter Portrait Watercolor Painting Process

Using gray as a base layer for low contrast, naturally lit portraits

Recently during my ten week long Portrait in Watercolor course I started to play with a new approach for portraits in subjects with softer lighting and less contrast in the features. It involves using a variety of watercolor techniques, from wet in wet color mixing, to glazing and lifting off. This post will be an attempt to break down all of these steps for a portrait that is fitting for the winter, rosy cheeks and all.

It will be like cooking from a recipe, with a step by step approach. Speaking of which, I hate cooking from recipes online where all the ingredients are buried under a long preamble about the dish’s history and a bunch of pop-up ads.

So — Boom, here are your art material ingredients, right at the top.

Art Materials:

• 300g cold pressed watercolor paper

• pencil and eraser

• ultramarine blue (a cool blue), permanent cyan (a warm blue), permanent red (a warm red), crimson lake (a cool red), cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, burnt umber (or burnt sienna)

• medium round brush, small round brush, sumi brush

• 2 jars of water

• paper towels

Ready to paint a portrait? Let’s go: