Portraiture Art: Capturing a Person’s Essence

Although you may be talented at replicating the structure of a figure it can be much trickier to capture their essence – the glint in your subject’s eye. You know you have done it when you feel their 'spark'. Their character and personality shines through the canvas. I can’t explain exactly how this is done, it is something about technique, about feeling a person’s intricate movements and gestures – it’s something elusive. I have put together some tips and tricks that I think work.

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For this post I will focus on portraiture art through painting and drawing, with a follow up post looking into other forms of portraiture such as: photography, digital art, printmaking and sculpture.

Portraiture Art Tips, Tricks and Techniques

People familiar with my art will know my portraiture work, especially my series called Female Faces. This isn’t a how to guide but a list of my top five tips for you to experiment with. Some of these will help you to fine tune the likeness of a person but that isn’t really what this post is about. Although photo-realism portraiture is very impressive, I am more interested in helping people capture a person’s character which may come through in the use of materials and considerations such as movements, color palette and textures to reflect the person’s personality or mood in any given moment.

#1 Perspective

The angle and the way in which a person poses for a portrait can be very telling of their character. If a person is shy and reserved don’t try to get them to perform in a way that is totally unnatural to them. Take a moment to gauge their character. You may prefer to do a portrait of a stranger and keep a sense of mystery and distance, or you might want to do a portrait of a close friend that you know well – appreciate that you may either be burdened with too much knowledge of a person or too little. Understand how you work and what you need to capture their ‘spirit’. I find it much easier painting strangers as if it is someone I know I tend to think I know what they look like without truly observing them.

#2 Clothing, Accessories and Setting

As with the previous point, a person who is comfortable in their own style and setting is more likely to offer up a natural representation of themselves which will benefit you as an artist in finding their personality and spark in the portrait.

Continue reading here https://www.marinachisty.com/post/portraiture-art-capturing-a-person-s-essence

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