Many of us watercolourists love a little abstraction, which comes with the territory…. when the water flows!
But how to tackle portraits…all this talk of abstraction and expression is fine, but it must somehow look like someone too!
I like my portrait studies to be loose and expressive. However, I generally start with the beginnings of a likeness in dry media and then model the form in a very limited palette.
In this example, I got on with it using just burnt sienna and ultramarine blue.
Burnt sienna and ultramarine blue… a great pairing because they give a nice range of warm and cool tones. Don’t be frightened of blues in the shadows and features, you need them! Only now do I think of adding more colour. In this case just some warmer tones and a splash of background:
I find this approach works well in most cases. A couple of weeks ago a student commented that their work looked lifeless and I asked “so what’s your favorite colour?” – just adding a partial wash…in yellow in this case…was all that was needed.
For myself, I’m often drawn to use a last minute wash of cerulean blue, a colour I find really integrates the work:
Give it a try and let me know how it goes!