In my experience, eyes are rather tricky things to paint—and as small as they are in comparison to the rest of the face, they carry a huge amount of importance in a portrait. Not only do eyes need to look realistic, engaging, and alive, but they also need to resemble the eyes of the person that you’re painting.
In the following video, Craig Nelson demonstrates his own step-by-step methods for painting eyes, starting with the whites of the eyes in shadow, then moving on to the lash line, eyebrows, and folds of the upper eyelids before ever putting any color in the iris. More importantly, he’s getting the results below by continually studying his subject while painting. Take a look:
Finally, my "big project" is finished! It’s been a crazy day with a lot going on, but foliotwist.com is finally live and online! Since I’ve kept it a complete secret up until launch, here’s a quick (mostly visual) overview of what it does. . .read more
Before you start a painting, it's often a good idea to draw out a preliminary sketch of your subject matter with all the right proportions and measurements. In the follow video, Craig Nelson demonstrates how he uses gesture drawing techniques to quickly sketch his figures. He also explains how. . . read more
In a still life painting, every object's color is affected by the colors of the objects around them. . . but white objects are affected more than most, which can make them very difficult to paint. In the following video, Craig Nelson explains his process for painting two white eggs. He starts . . . read more
Today, Jean Pederson gives a brief demonstration of how she layers various pigments of transparent watercolors to produce a realistic, three-dimensional image on paper. Her subject matter—an eye—is tricky under the best of circumstances, but as you'll see, she starts with a fairly . . . read more
In today's video tutorial, watercolor painter Carl Dalio demonstrates his techniques for painting cloudy skies. After sketching out his entire drawing on watercolor paper, Carl starts right in with the sky. Take a look: Click here to get the full-length tutorial by Carl Dalio from Creative Cat. . . read more
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