- Hello, art lovers. Welcome to a very special afternoon of creativity, where we are going to learn how to mix skin tones with the artist Melissa Clements. I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to all of you who are streaming in through our virtual doors this afternoon. I can see 100s of you coming in on Zoom, welcome and welcome to our friends on Facebook Live as well. The programme this afternoon is, has always been brought to you by the National Portrait Gallery, which is housed on the beautiful lands of the And I'd like to acknowledge their elders, past and present and extend a warm welcome to any first nations people who are joining us this afternoon. Now, these workshops are a very exciting thing for the National Portrait Gallery to bring to you. Doing it virtually though is a very strange experience for our poor artists that we throw into. 'Cause usually we, you know, we bring some art loving folk into a room. We have all our materials. Here we're at in our studio at the National Portrait Gallery. And I'm gonna go walk you through a little bit of housekeeping before I introduce you to our workshop later this afternoon. But there is still a little bit of time for you to have a look at the post in your email or either on our website. There is a few materials that we asked you to gather. If you don't have all of those, it's no dramas. If you're just here to sit and listen for now and experience later on, that's also super fantastic. But if you need a couple of minutes just to quickly gather a little bit of extra things, have another little look at that list. You've got a little bit of time before we get into it. My name's Gill. I'm very lucky to be one of the digital team members here at the Portrait Gallery. And the setup that I alluded to before is, well, it's quite complex. You know, we've done a few of these workshops now and we're sort of hoping and thinking that we're probably getting to the point where we've got a really good result for you out there in virtual land. However, every artist likes to work in a different way. So if there's something about our setup this afternoon, that's not working for you, you just give us a shout out. We've got Robert and Hector and Mark and Georgina, all hanging out here behind the scenes and we'll be able to tweak things for you and make sure that you get the best possible experience this afternoon. If you would like to, we'd really encourage you to leave your cameras on. Now, the reason for that is that we are kind of working in the dark here a little bit. And our lovely artist is also trying to produce a programme basically to the tech people in the room. However, we do have a massive screen up here. Mark, if you don't mind zooming out, where we gonna be able to see you all, look waving, thank you so much for that. And for leaving your cameras on, we really feel like you're in the room with us when you do that, thank you. We also love seeing a lot of the top of your heads because often people get very involved in working and we see a lot of this as you're painting. So, and we would also like to be able to share your creation with our artists this afternoon too later on in the programme. We do not have the function to be able to take questions using the microphones, because there's just so many of you joining us today. And we also have the two different platforms, Zoom and Facebook running. However, if you'd like to ask a question or clarify any of the points during the presentation, it's highly interactive. So please do pop your comments into the chat function on Zoom or into the comments on Facebook. And I'm gonna do my very best to be your voice and take as many of those questions to Melissa for you. Comments and questions always welcome. If you wanted to just like kick that off and give it a go. We'd love to know where in the world you are joining us from. I believe there's some international people coming in as well as people from all over Australia. We'd really love to hear whereabouts in the world you are. It's always very exciting for us to be able to bring these programmes to as many people as possible. So let me now without any further ado, introduce our wonderful artist to you this afternoon, Melissa, please come in.
- Hi everybody, thank you for having me.
- Thank you so much for joining us.
- Thank you.
- I thought we might just kick off by maybe having a little bit of a chat about, well, you'd like might like to tell us a little bit about yourself and your art practise.
- Yeah, absolutely. So my name's Melissa and I'm a finalist in the Darling Prize this year for portraiture, which is extremely exciting and it's amazing to be in the Portrait Gallery in Canberra. I remember visiting here over 10 years ago when I was a little year seven in high school for the first time and walking through the Portrait Gallery and thinking, oh, that would be amazing. 'Cause I was already making art of paintings of, and people of paintings of people at that part in my life that early on. So the idea of being able to be in a gallery like this was just astonishing and something I never thought I could actually achieve. So to be here at this part of my life as well is so exciting. So I'm a portrait painter. I've been doing portraits now for well over 10 years, but I've only been painting for about five or six years. And so learning the skill of colour and skin tone is something that has been a long journey and something that has evolved throughout my art practise. But over the last year or two I've since becoming a full-time artist and taking that practise into a studio full-time. I've really sat down and kind of methodically.
- Methodically.
- Methodically kind of gone through my process and formatted a way of, you know, how can I share this with other people? And it's not only been helpful for others, but it's been so helpful for myself as well to sit down and work out a process and be able to share it with other people as well.
- That's amazing. Would you like to tell it before we get into it? Would you like to tell us a little about the portrait that is in the darling portrait process.
- Yeah, of course. So the piece that in the National Portrait Gallery for the Darling Prize is called Sean Whadjuk Becoming and it's a portrait of an amazing Noongar man from WA called Shaun Nannup. And he has been a huge mentor for me and a support for me for the last few years since I met him. And the moment I met him, I thought I have to paint this man, 'cause he just brings this huge presence into any room he enters in. And that's really what I wanted to bring into this. This painting is that sense of, of presence that he fill a room up as soon as he enters. So big part of him is that that presence physically with his hands, he talks a lot. He often does welcome to countries and also takes people on country and connects them to his culture and the land. So showing that physicality is really important, but also that sense of, I guess, texture and that idea that he's kind of melting into the background almost capturing that idea of the country is part of him and he is part of country as well.
- Yeah, it's very powerful work and it's certain popular with visits, our visitors to the prize. If anyone is in Canberra, the Darling Portrait prize is only on for a little bit longer. It closes on the 9th of October. So I'd really encourage everybody to try and get along and see it. But this afternoon, now I have a little confession to make. When I was in high school studying art, I was asked to paint a portrait and I was so frustrated with the process of trying to get a skin tone, right. That I decided to paint my portrait blue. So basically the person looked like those characters out of Avatar, the film by James Cameron. So I thoroughly failed my first lesson in mixing skin tones but this afternoon you're gonna help solve that problem for me. And you're gonna help solve it probably for some of the participants here this afternoon.
- Well that's the aim.
- And we've got three hours. So do you wanna just give people a little rundown of how we might break that time down?
- Yeah, absolutely. So the day or the afternoon, depending on where you are in the world is split into two halves. The first half is going to be quite theory based. So there's going to be quite a lot of information that you'll be getting. And so in your email, you probably would've, hopefully would've got a printout, but all of that will also be on the PowerPoint as well. So if you did miss that information and I'll also be speaking through all of that. So the first half of the day will be that theory based of how to actually mix the skin tone. So the alchemy behind all these different pigments and colours, how they go together and that kind of beautiful variety that you can get of different colours. Then in the afternoon after our lunch break or mid afternoon break we'll then be coming back. And that's when we are commencing the painting session for the afternoon. So not sure how long that will go for depending on how quickly we get the first half finished but hopefully about an hour, an hour and a half to two hours of painting time in the afternoon. And we'll be working on a beautiful portrait Alla Prima style, so wet on wet. I love to do these really sketchy portraits because I spend hours and hours in the studio on works that take many months. So to break up that process by doing exercises over a couple of hours is something I often do all the time. So that's also a nice way of showing that part of my studio practise to others as well whilst applying the skin tone element to it.
- Sounds brilliant, should we get into?
- Yeah, looking into it.
- Okay we'll go on reset cameras and we'll start getting into the workshop of the section. So it's so lovely to see all of those faces and everybody up there ready to go. Thank you, hello, terrific. All right, I'm gonna reset myself over here and if anyone has any questions throughout the theory, please feel free to let me know and I'll shoot them through to Melissa.
- Okay, so are we ready to go?
- [Gill] Yeah, I think so.
- Okay, perfect. So as I was saying earlier with Gill, we are breaking today up into two halves and the first half is quite theory based. That's when we're gonna be doing all of our skin tone mixing. But before we get into the actual mixing, I wanted to first talk a little bit about myself and then go into some of the colour theory that I never really got taught in the early part of my art career. So especially in high school, that's something that I think maybe it was assumed knowledge or I was just never taught it. So even now as a full-time painter, it's still something that I like to refresh every now and then to remind myself the theory. But before we get into that, I want to talk just about my journey a little bit. So as I was saying, I'm a portrait artist. I'm full-time now but I didn't necessarily go through the maybe typical process of what you would expect of an artist to get to being a full-time artist. Although in saying that I'm not sure there is an expected pathway, but what I mean by that is I never went to art school. I didn't do a full-time degree at at an art school or a university. I chose to do art history instead at UWA in Perth. And that was really because it gave me an opportunity to learn these, about classical history of painting. But I personally felt that there wasn't an art school in Perth that would align with this idea of classical painting techniques that I was really passionate about. So I really wanted to do classical portraiture. I wanted to do realism and paint faces. I didn't really want to do conceptual or contemporary style art that I saw other young people doing. So instead I kind of did my own thing. I did art history and then chose to do little residencies. So I did a residency in New York. I did a summer school at the National Art School in Sydney. And so I never really had that classical training, but I picked and chose different placements and courses where I could learn from other artists. So to be now, one of those artists sharing that with others is amazing. That's so exciting considering that I love learning from others myself, but I think something that I really wanna share is this idea because I didn't have that classical formal training. So much of my work has been self taught and maybe that's meant my process to get to where I am has been a bit more windy. But a bit of an example, as you can see on the PowerPoint slide, the picture at the bottom is a bit of an example of what I did throughout my teenage years. I would do these nice kind of charcoal drawings. And I love charcoal because it was such a painterly process and medium to work with. But it's great because it's black and white. You don't have to think about colour. And colour was really, really daunting for me. I didn't really know how to approach it. So when I first did my, did my ever did my first ever portrait that was in full colour, this piece here, this is, I think I did this when I was about a 17, 18. I didn't know what I was doing. So I looked at a photo and I thought I'm gonna replicate that. And the first kind of instinct that I had was to just go to the art shop and look for the colours purely from the paint tube that most looked like skin tone. So the colours that I went went for was white, and then three browns. So I went for burnt sienna, which is like a reddy brown, yellow Oka, which was more of a yellowy, earthy yellow, and then burnt umber, which is kind of a rich, cool black brown. And as you can see, we've got, when I've isolated, the different colours from the pigment of the skin tone, they don't look like skin tones. They kind of luckily work quite well considering the lighting going on there, but they don't really match what my skin tone actually is. They're far too brown and goldeny coloured. They're not very natural.
- [Gill] Look, Melissa, they're not blue.
- [Melissa] They're not blue.
- [Gill] You did a lot better than my 17 year old portrait.
- Yeah, although it's funny because I was gonna say that now my process, and it's not something that we'll get to really discuss today, but my process is actually to do a green underpainting. So it's a technique called Verdaccio and it's an Italian ancient Renaissance technique where you do an underpainting that is full green. So it's a valued painting with different lights and darks of green. And before I did that, I was actually doing blue as an underpainting. And that's because we've got blues and greens in our undertone and skin. So if you think red, or red to pink and yellow in the, the colour wheel, which is what we think of his skin tone is the opposite to blue in the colour wheel. So that sits underneath as an undertone. So by painting, that is the first layer. It actually works very well, but actually I think that's one of the reasons this looks so red is 'cause there's no blue in here. So you're not totally wrong thinking that, but I wanna talk a little bit about that idea of these, three primary colours that we have in skin tone, because this is why I was so afraid of making my own skin tone by mixing it. Is because of these three things that you really need to know about colour theory. So the first thing, and it's something that I was always aware of. And that's what scared me was that skin tone is made out of three colours, red, yellow and blue. So we've got all those primary colours in our skin naturally, and today we're gonna be going through the different ratios of those three colours that we mix in order to get something that is really natural looking and also very varied as well. So keep that in mind. We've got the three colours and that's what everyone's been asked to supply today.
- [Gill] Oh, sorry can I jump in and ask, a few people have asked if there's a substitute for cobalt blue.
- Yeah, actually that's a good point. Probably the most important is having two good reds and, or a good red and a good yellow, but the blue, because we use such a teeny tiny amount of it. I like cobalt blue and I teach that because I find it's quite forgiving. It's not too overly pigmented. I find depending on at least the series I use, but you can use pretty much any blue because you're just tinting the colour slightly. I just prefer to use cobalt blue. And I use it in other parts of my painting. Things like ultramarine blue can also work well. The reason I don't use it is because when I teach with it, it's such a strong colour that people put far too much and they immediately muddy up their colours. So just if you're familiar with the, the type of blue that you're working with, then that should be absolutely fine. Just going little by little, tiny little bits of paint as you go and work out the ratio of what you need as you add it. But we'll be doing that slowly steady as we go anyway. So yeah, but cobalt blue is what I use, but it's not completely necessary to have the same one.
- [Gill] Terrific, thank you.
- That's okay, so those three colours are all in skin tones. And then within that, it's important to recognise this idea of value, hue and chroma. And value, hue and chroma are all related. So depending on the ratio of those three primary colours, with the addition of white or burnt amber as well or things like that, that changes the value, hue and chroma of the paint. So I want to talk a little bit about these three, three concepts because they're things that I was never taught at school. And then, because I was never taught at school, I wasn't taught at university when I did do a couple of fine arts units. So it was totally missed for me. And I really had to force myself to go back to basics and learn this. So I think it's worth recapping. So hue is what we think about when we think of the, what the colour actually is. So when we think of red, yellow, blue, that refers to the hue. Skin is made up of all different hues. So it's got blue in it, absolutely. It's also got greens and purples and blues and violets and oranges. So the key really to getting really natural skin tones is having all those different hues and different parts of the portrait that we're working on. Value is more related to volume, I guess. So the lightness and darkness of a hue and using brighter values for example, is going to give this the sense that it's being hit by light and then darker values are gonna give the sense that it's more in the shadows. So being aware of lightness and darkness in a portrait is really important because it gives the sense that it's sitting in space. So a really good top tip that I like to use and it's something that you can do at home, or if you're working on another computer screen, for example, with the photo reference that you're working with, you can set your phone camera to grey scale, and then hold that grey scale kind of new version of your camera over your reference photo. Or you could even just turn your, your screen to black and white, and you can then get just an idea of the lightness and darkness of the work that you're the picture that you're working from without being distracted by colour. So colour and value are two different things. And so it's important to recognise that. As you can see in that little diagram there, I really love this diagram because that centre red, where we've got value, it looks very dark because it's so bright. But then when we put the grey scale over it, it's actually in the centre of the value scale. The last one is chroma and this is something that I find people know the least. People often quite familiar with hue and value, and chroma refers to the purity or the intensity of a colour. And this is really important because it's where the concept of blue comes in. If we've got skin tone that is far too saturated, that is far too intense. It's not gonna look natural if it's kind of pure orange, then it's, we don't really see that naturally. But if you add the complimentary to orange, which is obviously orange is made with yellow and red, if you add the complimentary, which is blue, it's gonna dull the chroma down by adding almost as what you can see on that little diagram, it adds kind of like a grey to it. It makes it less saturated. And that's how it turns from being this really vivid orange, to being a much more natural skin tone. So colours that have high saturation have a really great chroma and colours that are weak, have a lower chroma. So add the complimentary to whatever paint that you're working with to lower that chroma down. And so I've kind of just explained that here on this diagram, all of those three concepts working together, the hue of this is magenta, and then we've got a low value is the brighter values. And then a high value is down the bottom that's darker, a high chroma is in the top right corner that's really saturated. And then the low chroma is actually anything in the bottom left corner. So it's got more grey in it, yeah.
- [Gill] We've had a lot of people asking questions about, you know, whether they're able to use certain paints over other paints. Do you wanna maybe, you might be getting into this after you've done the colour theory, but maybe touch on the ones that you've chosen and if other substitutes are okay.
- Yeah, absolutely. So this kind of goes into what I'm going to be talking about next as well. So the three colours that we've asked you to supply for today, in terms of the primary colours is lemon yellow. alizarin crimson and cobalt blue. So as I was saying, cobalt blue is the one blue colour that I prefer to use, but because it's used in such small quantities it's really not totally necessary to have that one. I like lemon yellow and alizarin crimson together just because I find that they're really beautiful colours to work with and they're both cool. So this idea of cool and warm hues is probably something to discuss first. And then I'll clarify why I've used these two.
- [Gill] Absolutely.
- So all colours are either warm or cool and that refers to what undertone that they have. So a warm colour has a red or an orange undertone, and then a cool colour has a green, blue or a purple undertone. So if we want to achieve a true mix of colours, then you would want two cool colours or two warm colours. So it really doesn't matter whether you're working with these specific pigments, alizarin crimson or lemon yellow. It's more about making sure that they are colours that work well together. In saying that I don't think there's any rules when it comes to paint mixing, as long as it works for you. That's what's important. This little diagram here shows a few of the different colours that I personally like to work with. So for a cool palette, which is what we're working with today, that's lemon yellow, alizarin crimson and cobalt blue. Although people debate whether cobalt is warm or cool, so it can be used with either I think. If you have, for example, warm colours, like cadmium yellow deep or cadmium red that will also work just as well. Then I also like to have some browns in my palette. So that's why we've got a burnt umber and a titanium white as well to brighten. But really the main thing is to just be aware that whatever colours that you work with work well together, if you are working with say lemon yellow and cadmium red, which is a cool yellow and a warm red, the only difference is they're not gonna be as vibrant straight away. So that might mean that you add less blue into it because the undertone of the cool yellow, which has some blue in it already is going to mix in with the cadmium red, which is warm and already add a little bit of blue into it. So it really depends. Personally, I find that lemon yellow and alizarin crimson are nice, but they don't have to be those ones exactly.
- [Gill] Terrific, thank you.
- So here's a point about blue, which is a bit of the theme today so far. The role of blue and skin tone is like I was saying just to lower the chroma down. Because we're mixing up red and yellow, which creates an orange. The blue makes it more natural. And as I've been saying, blue is very strong. So that's why I choose cobalt blue because slightly too much of it makes your skin tone turn green. So just be aware that when you are mixing these up, I'll guide you as well. When I say to use a teeny tiny little bit of blue, listen to that because a lot of people they hear teeny tiny and they think that they're only putting like a half a pea size mountain, but a teeny tiny amount of blue might be like a pin size, pin head size amount. So we'll have cameras up as well to show what I'm mixing and you'll be able to see the quantities. But yeah, be aware of that, that blue is very strong. Okay, so working with a portrait, as I've been saying, there's so many different undertones in faces, there's so many different hues within the colour wheel. I wanted to visualise that before we get into the paint mixing, which we'll be doing next. So the portrait that I'm going to be working from today is on the screen. And you'll obviously have all of your own pieces that you're working from, but this still applies no matter who you're working with. This idea that, what I've done is I've taken this portrait and I've put it into Photoshop and I've isolated out all these different parts of the face, these different colours. And then when you look at where this colour belongs in the colour family, I guess you can see we've got some that are very orange. Some that are very red and then some that have blue undertones. So that's important because what we're mixing up today is if I can do my maths correctly, we're doing about 25 colours that we're mixing up. But within that there's not much contrast. They're all gonna be very slightly changes. So some are gonna be slightly more red. Some will be slightly more yellow or slightly more orange, but by themselves they might look quite similar to each other. But as we can see from this slide, the undertones in faces are very important. So even though the colour themselves might look the same, they've got different undertones and the eye can still sense that, especially in a painting. So being aware of that is important. And so if you're mixing today and you're finding that some of your colours are looking similar, don't be alarmed by that. In fact, that's a good thing because you're still using a different process to get there. And the ultimate effect is still gonna register on the painting that you're working from.
- [Gill] Terrific, we'll also have a copy of your reference image, which we are able to put up for all the people working from home. So if you feel free to work off the ones that you've preprepared and brought along, otherwise we will have your reference shop that's available for people to look at as well.
- Yes absolutely, yeah.
- [Gill] Terrific.
- Fantastic, so this is what we are making today. So what I've asked people to do is have two canvases or canvas boards. One of the canvas boards is the larger canvas, and it doesn't have to be the exact same measurements that we asked you to supply, but we'll have the larger one will be the one that we are gonna be painting the portrait on. And hopefully you might have drawn a pre-sketch onto that. So you're ready to get started for that smaller canvas board that I'm working from. I'm going to be transferring the information on the slide onto this canvas board and filling in all of these little squares. So I'll be mixing up paints and then adding them in, and then writing all of my information here. So by the way, this doesn't have to be exactly the same as yours. I like to use these because they're quite easy to, to carry around and transport and show people. But even if you just have like a visual journal that you're working from, that's totally fine as well. So I've pre lined mine out but it would be a good point now for all of you to line or just draw some lines into your, whether you're working from a diary or from another small little canvas board. So I might just hold this up a bit higher to the camera. It's one, two, three, four, five by one, two five by four lines, six, six by five rows and columns. But you only need to draw five lines horizontally and four lines vertically. So it doesn't have to be perfect. It's more just to get this nice grid. And this longer grid here is for you to write information. I'll show you an example that I made earlier. So this is a bit smaller. So ignore this black, this blank space here. We're only gonna be creating this middle part, but you just wanna have some nice squares. So four by five, and then some information space for some information on the side but we'll be going through this row by row. So you don't have to rule it all up now, is if you can get the first row down that would be great. If while you're doing that, I'll speak through the order in which we're gonna get this information down. So we've got five rows. The first two rows are your cool oranges. So keep in mind, this is what I'm doing because I'm working with cool colours. I'm working with the lemon yellow, and alizarin if you have warm pinks, oh, sorry, pinks. If you have warm colours, then you are gonna create something that is more pinky potentially. You're gonna be creating something that is warm orange and warm pink, as opposed to cool orange and cool pink but the effect will ultimately be the same. So that's not a problem. So the first two rows will be cool orange, and we're starting with mid toned to light. Then the next column will be, next row will be mid tone to dark. Then the next two will be our pinks. It will be the same again. So it'll be mid to light and then mid to dark. And then that final row is going to be a grey or a purple. And we'll go through these as I was saying row by row. And I'll speak through what each of these is good for, but that's just a little bit of an overview of what this grid will end up looking like by the end of this session. A few little tips about how to approach this, especially if you're new to mixing. Two brighten values, which we'll be doing three times over three rows, you need to add white progressively. So we'll mix up a colour, will save some of that colour will put that to the side to work with in the afternoon. And then with what we've got left on the mixing palette, you'll add some white to that, make it a little bit brighter. Save half of that add white again. So you add white progressively to brighten values, to darken values though it's a little bit different and we'll be going through this, of course but it's not the same as just adding black, for example, or brown to darken. You need to add a combination of blue, alizarin crimson or whatever your red is and burnt umber and that's what's gonna darken it. So we'll work through that, but that's just to be aware of the process to darken skin tone is different than the process to brighten skin tone. And then four tips to be economical with your paint and you'll have the freedom and the luxury of using as much paint as you like. But when I teach these in person, it's very different because we are working with kind of smaller quantities of paint, but it's still good to be aware because obviously oil paint is expensive. You wanna be able to make sure that you're not wasting as much as possible. So a few little tips. Add darker colours or stronger colours into lighter colours. So for example, you wouldn't want to have loads of blue on your paint and then progressively add red and yellow into it to get it to the colour that you need. You would want to start with the yellow and the red, and then slowly add the blue to it, to get it to the colour. So start with your lighter colours, mix darker colours into that. And then on that same vein, progressively add smaller amounts of colour into the paint. So even if it don't try and judge it straight away by getting the exact amount at the start, it's better to go slow and mix more slowly and less at a time than to jump ahead. That being in mind, if you do mix the wrong colour, which always happens, I often do it myself. I'll get ahead of myself and I'll rush and I'll mix the wrong colour. Try and notice that you've made that mistake. And if you do, don't worry. But if you're noticing it's not looking right, and it's important to be able to make that judgement , just scoop up all the paint and save it and put it to the side because you'll probably find you can use it later on anyway. So if you have mixed the wrong colour, then just put it to the side and begin again. And then the final thing is to wipe the pallet knife between mixing colours. So it's so easy for you to contaminate your mix. For example, if you are not keeping things clean, especially your brushes and your pallet knife. So if you've got some Chuck's cloth with you or some baby wipes, that is a great way to keep your pallet knife clean.
- [Gill] Terrific.
- Great, so we're just about ready to get started with the mixing, with your pallet.
- [Gill] Melissa, does it matter if people are using acrylics?
- No, not necessarily because the process is basically the same. I work with oils, so that's what I like to teach. If you are more familiar with acrylics and you know, how they work, then that's absolutely fine. The one thing to bear in mind though because this is a three hour long workshop by the afternoon you might need to mix up some fresh paint for the painting because it might dry out. If you're working with certain mediums that keep the paint wet for longer, then it should be okay. But absolutely the colours don't change depending on whether it's oil or acrylic.
- [Gill] That's great, thank you.
- A few little tips about how to keep your palette clean, try and keep your pure pigments to one side of the pallet, save a whole area that will be for mixing. So I've got three pallets today. One pallet I'm just keeping my pure paint on, the second is going to be for mixing. And then the third is going to be where I mix my paints and put them to the side. So obviously you don't wanna mix up your paint and then just wipe it and dispose of it. You wanna save what you're making? That's why we're doing all of this work. So as you go, when you've mixed a colour that you like scoop it up with your pallet knife and then put it to the side. So that later on, we've got it and it's ready to go.
- [Gill] Terrific.
- Okay, so I think we're ready to get going with the mixing. Does, I mean, I can't ask all of you if you're ready, but hopefully you have all of your paint ready to go. I've got all of my colours squeezed out onto my little tile pallet and I've got my brushes and then my pallet knife. And I've also got the canvas board that I'm working with with my grid on it. If you haven't got that full grid ruled out yet, don't worry too much. As long as you have that first row, that's what's most important because that's what we're starting with. So we're beginning with a cool orange, which is mid to light. And the reason why it's orange is because it's going to have more yellow as opposed to red. So we're still going to be using the yellow and the red mixed together to make an orange, but it's going to be more on the orange side, as opposed to the red side, it's gonna be more of a yellowy orange. So this kind of pigment I find is fantastic to use for the parts of the face that have less blood in it. If you think of it logically like that, the parts of the face, where the bone is closer to the skin. So potentially the jaw, the cheek bones, the forehead, absolutely even the brow bone. So obviously if you think that the colour of the red kind of blush of a face comes from blood and blood vessels in the skin. So if you're just using or mixing up skin tone, that is too pink, then that's gonna look far too, kind of monochrome. It's about having these contrasts in values or, sorry, hues. That is what's gonna create something that looks really natural. So these orange tones, we're gonna be making something that is first on the lighter end of the spectrum. Then we're gonna make something darker on the next column, next row. So I'm going to begin by grabbing some lemon yellow, and you'll notice that the yellow is the weakest colour. The red is a little bit stronger, and then the blue is strongest out of those three. So because of that, I'm starting with yellow and I'm gonna add the next two colours into that. And I'm gonna grab about a pea size amount of yellow and place that on my pallet. If you've not used a pallet knife before I find the best way to hold is if I can demonstrate, like, whereas there we go. So hold it kind of in your fist with your fingers underneath and then with your thumb on top as well. So more like this, scoop up and then rotate your hand and push back down. I find that's the best way to mix rather than say, going like this. You wanna scoop up and then push back down. So we're grabbing a nice generous amount of the lemon yellow and then I'm gonna take some red, but a little bit less red than I took of the yellow because red is stronger than the yellow. And then I'll push that in and mix. and straight away you can see that's a really nice bright orange.
- [Gill] So just to answer Evelyn's question. Oh, sorry. Kelly's question. We have five by six grid squares. Is that correct, that you're working with?
- [Melissa] Yes.
- [Gill] Yes.
- [Melissa] Yeah, so five by six, but the small squares are four by five. So four by five of the actual paints that we're mixing up.
- [Gill] And then we've got the bit on the left hand side for instructions or notes.
- [Melissa] Yes, that's right. I'm definitely more of an artist than a math person.
- [Gill] I can't do math to save myself.
- [Melissa] So I ended up adding in a little bit more yellow because this is basically what we want to get to. Hopefully you can all see that, it's much more of a yellowy orange than a red orange. So going back to the colour theory at this point, this is got far too much of a high chroma. We wouldn't really ever see that naturally in skin tone. So the way that we bump the chroma down is by adding a bit of blue. So I'm gonna pick up a little, this is when I say like the, the pinhead size amount of blue that I'm gonna add and you'll see straight away how much that tins the colour. It really changes it. And don't be scared if it looks green straight away. If it's looking really green, then you've probably added too much, but it is going to change that into more of a brown as opposed to an orange. That's what we want.
- [Gill] Can see lots of people, busily mixing.
- [Melissa] Yeah that's good. Okay, so I've just kind of scooped up, pushed down maybe about 10 or 20 times, depending on how quick I'm doing it. And that's thoroughly mixed now. So with that in mind, I've got quite a nice amount of paint there. I'm going to save half of it and then put it to the side and then I'll still have half left on the mixing part of my palette. So it's important that we do this because obviously we like this colour. This is a good colour. We're gonna want to use it later. so we don't wanna waste it, so save it. So take up half and then pop it on another part of the pallet. So in this case, I've got whole separate little mixing pallet for myself, but just to this, the side of your pallet, keep that separate. And then we'll paint these all in at the very end but just bear in mind that colour, that we've just mixed up is going to be number one of four on our first row. So that will go in our first little square on the top. So we've got that saved and then we've got a little bit left. This is then going to be number two. So the second square across and just a little disclaimer, don't feel like it has to be perfect. Don't feel like, you know, if you've accidentally put a square in the wrong position, don't worry. It's more about, you're learning the process of painting. It's not about having this beautiful, perfect grid at the end. So just be aware that you're learning and it's you know, if it's not perfect, if it's not looking super pretty, that's absolutely fine. I'm gonna now add a bit of white to this to brighten it because we're going from a mid tone to a light value.
- [Gill] How much white would you say that you added there Melissa?
- I just did a little scoop. So probably about the same as I added of the alizarin. So I need like minuscule measurement.
- [Gill] Yes, we do.
- [Melissa] Units, half a pea size. If that makes sense. But remember it's just progressive. So I might choose to add more, but I'm just adding little bits at a time but I think this is good. The main thing you wanna look for is that you're getting something that is a different value to what you had before. So the first value that we mix just before is gonna be number one, this one because we've added some white doesn't matter if someone has added more or less than me, as long as it's a different value, that's what's important. So that white has already made that a much nicer, brighter value. We can see that contrast and change. So I'll scoop up half of this and put it to the side, but I've still got a little bit more left and the reason why we can keep splitting it in half and we've still got some left is 'cause we're adding a bit more paint each time.
- [Gill] I see.
- [Melissa] So we've still got a little bit of that lighter skin tone left, but now we wanna mix up an even brighter value. So this is gonna be value number three. So we want to add more white again. So I'll just add the same amount of white again that I did for that second colour that I mixed.
- [Gill] So just to recap, those colours that have gone in for the first one, we had the pea size bit of yellow. We had slightly less bit of the red colour. And a tiny, tiny pin head size bit of blue. And then we've just been since then for the next two, lots of chroma changes. We've just been adding in a little bit of white.
- [Melissa] Yes
- [Gill] Terrific.
- [Melissa] We now should have three colours. And then we'll have a little bit left again and we're mixing up four different values but that's not exhaustive. You can, you know, if you think there's an infinite number of values between the four that we are mixing and then there's also even brighter than the brightest that we've mixed. And then in the row underneath, we're gonna mix up our darker values again. So then there's even darker ones than what we're mixing. So don't, again, don't feel like if there's only a slight contrast between two of the colours, that's okay. Maybe you can make the next one even brighter again. So you can see it's more about as long as you can see a bit of a difference that's what's important. And then I'm just adding white one last time to create the fourth colour.
- [Gill] Is it roughly the same amount of white each time or as you say, it's just, yes, it is, okay.
- Yeah, so add a pin size. I find white is probably the colour that you use the most of, because you're always adding a little bit more. Some people like to use a mixing white, like zinc white instead of titanium white. For teaching, especially for teaching something like mixing skin tones. I like to use titanium white because it's quite pigmented and opaque. So because you do use so much of it, it's a good white to work with but there's a lot of debates about different whites. Okay, so now I have those four different values. And at this point doesn't, if you're a little bit behind that's okay, because we're gonna then spend about five minutes just painting these into the squares. And if you want to, you can also write some notes in that longer rectangle that we have to just remind you of the process that you took to get to that point. So at this point as well, I'm gonna crack open my medium. So if you're working with acrylic, then you can just use water for this. But if you're working with oils, you can't use water to dilute down the paint. So it's important to use like a number one medium, which I use, I buy, I get mine from Art Spectrum. I find it's just a good affordable, but good quality medium. And it's good to use because it serves the paint. It also speeds drying and it helps it go further. But it also, because we're painting these nice little neat squares, it's gonna help us get into those, all those little ridges. So I dip into my medium first, just a little bit and then pick up some paint. And I'm just gonna go through each of those four squares and fill those in. And at that point I rather than then dipping into the next value, it's quite common to do that, but then that's when you will find that there's no contrast because there's still quite a lot of paint left on my brush. So I just take my Chuck's cloth and wipe it. It doesn't have to be perfectly clean, but just to get the excess off.
- [Gill] Zoe's wondering about the mixing mediums for oils. She has refined Linseed oil and odourless solvent. And she was just wondering which one of those two, she should use.
- Probably the Linseed oil. I personally, I don't know an awful lot about mediums. I kind of found the one that I like and I've used it and stuck with it, but I do know that the solvent would probably be more from cleaning the brushes at the end of the day. So that's what, so I do have that odourless solvent and I use that to clean my brushes rather than to dilute but you could use either, but the linseed oil probably will work better, but you can also just try out both and see what works for you. So I've got, okay.
- [Gill] Chrissy is wondering about hers looking quite orange, whereas on the screen, yours looks a lot more brown.
- If it's looking more orange, add a little bit more blue. But remember just a teeny tiny little bit, little bit as you go. So it could also be the camera and the translation of that as well. In person I can definitely see that mine is orange. It's definitely got that, that tint towards that kind of end of this, the colour wheel, rather than being more towards pink, for example. But it's not like this high saturation orange, it's still quite a natural, more of a skin tone. So if it is feeling quite saturated, it probably needs more blue, but not much more. So this is our cool orange mid to light. So I'm wondering if I should move on to the next one or stick with this .
- [Gill] Maybe we can get a show of hands from the people who've been kind enough to leave their cameras on. If people are ready to move on, can we get a thumbs up from you please? Yes, oh, somebody's running behind. Never fear, we will have this, this will be up live on Facebook and the recording will stay up there. We're also gonna work to get it up on our website as soon as possible. So if you do get a little bit lost throughout the process, you'll be able to go back and re-listen over it. I certainly I'm gonna have to listen over it again because there's so much information that I've, I won't absorb all under one sitting. But I think it looks as though the majority of people are happy to start to move on to the next bit.
- Okay, great. It's always this first row and the next row that takes the longest because you're learning the, I guess the quantities for the first time, the next few rows goes a bit quicker but if you're still mixing, I'll just at least start speaking through the next row.
- [Gill] Or maybe if you could recap the notes too. Sorry, just for the people who may not.
- For the first row?
- [Gill] Yeah.
- Yeah, so that was the three primary colours that we're working with for the entire grid, which is lemon yellow, alizarin crimson and cobalt blue. But because it's more orange, we're working with more lemon yellow. So we're mixing some red into that to create a vivid, more yellowy orange. Then at a hint of cobalt blue, which bumps down the chroma making it a little bit more brown. Then makes our colour number one, we save some of that. And then we add white progressively to get the next three colours and that more orangey yellowy cool colour is really good for forehead, jaw bones, cheek bones parts of the face that are being hit by light that are quite kind of with bone close to the skin.
- [Gill] Great, thank you.
- And then the next row we are going, we're kind of flipping, instead of going from dark to light, we're going from mid tone to dark now because we are rather than going progressively lighter, we're going progressively darker and the process is the same at the start. We're gonna mix up a kind of orangey, an orangey mid tone to begin with, but we still want it to be slightly darker than colour number one from before. So it's a bit strange. It's gonna be still orange, but it's going to be slightly darker orange. So we're gonna need a bit more red. So I'll speak through how that works. This is really good for more deeper skin tones or shadows as well. So if you can think back to earlier on in the slide where I isolated all those colours from the reference photo that we're working with, even though this girl has, she doesn't have super dark skin because half of her face is in shadow. We still need to mix up some darker valleys for those parts of her face. So we are working with the same three colours. So I'm gonna start with lemon yellow again. And I'm gonna take the same amount of lemon yellow as I took last time when I was mixing the first four colours up, place that down and add approximately the same amount, if not slightly more red as last time. So it's still an orange, it's still definitely more orange than red but because we're going more into the darker valleys now it would, I've added a touch more red than last time just to make it a little bit darker. The process here is really a little bit different. As I was saying before, it's not just as simple as adding one single colour to make it darker. We're almost going to be adding purple by adding more red and blue to darken and then adding some burnt amber as well to make it darker again. So at this stage, I've just got two colours in here. I've got lemon yellow and a bit more alizarin than last time but not an awful lot. Now I'm gonna add my blue, same as last time, a little piece or not pinhead size amount.
- [Gill] Pin head size yeah.
- [Melissa] Mix that in. Okay, I'm gonna add a touch, more red and a touch more blue just for me personally, yours might be fine but I just want mine to be slightly darker than my starting colour for my first row. Okay, perfect so this colour that I have now, it's still just those three colours. It's just yellow, red and blue but slightly different quantities. So this time still far more yellow than any of the other colours, but we've got a touch more red and a touch more blue than before, and that's given us a cool orange but it's now a darker mid tone. So same as before, I'm going to take half and then pop it to the side. So I'm kind of my kind of arsenal of colours is increasing. I've now got five colours that I've mixed up. Now with what we've got left I'm not gonna just add white to this or brown to darken it. I'm gonna add basically purple to it. And the purple comes in for just the next colour. So the one we just mixed is gonna be colour number one in row number two. For colour number two in row number two, I'm gonna add just a bit more red again and just a bit more blue. So basically this, a pin size head amount of each again. We're basically tinting it a little bit more purplely but because it's still so heavy on the yellow, it's gonna stay more brown as opposed to purple. And I'm just barely touching into my paint to pick up a little bit more each time to see how much I need. And I tend to find that, you know, there's, when it comes to darker skin tones the undertone is really important. So I find there's not an awful lot of contrast when it starts getting really, really dark. There's not an awful lot of change in terms of what's actually darker or lighter, but the undertones are changing a little bit more. So you might have a dark brown or a black that is a bit more blue undertone and one that's a bit more red undertone and they might look similar darkness or they might, one might look much brighter than the other, but they are actually the same value. And that's just because they've got different undertones to them, but those are really important. Okay, so now I've got a colour number, colour number two in row number two. And I've created that just by adding progressively a little bit more red and a little bit more blue, and I've still got a little bit left.
- [Gill] That actually wasn't as scary as I thought it was gonna be. Oh, that's good. It's a lot of information.
- [Gill] Some reason adding white seems much easier to me, that seemed to be relatively simple?
- Yeah, it's no, I think it's, it's important not to just get lazy and just add black or brown to dark in something because it does make it much more luminous. So if you can know the steps than it it looks and it has that nicer effect but it's not super daunting. So I've got a little bit left for the next two colours, the final two colours in the dark part of the scale. So colour number three and colour number four. This is when we're gonna add a little bit of the brown, because I find personally by this point, if I'm just adding purple, so just adding red and blue, it's just gonna start to become purple because we are losing the yellow now. So rather, in order to keep that cool yellow to keep that yellow end of the valley or the hue range, we wanna start adding brown. So again, we're gonna add a touch more, more red and blue again. So we are gonna add a touch more purple. So pinhead size again, of red and blue. But in addition, now we're also gonna add a little bit of the burnt umber, which is that really rich, deep black, black brown almost. So this isn't a black but a lot of people use it as a black substitute because it's so dark. So a pinhead size amount of those three red blue and the burnt umber. And then I mix that up. Great, and that's a bit darker again but it's still very much orange as opposed to purple, which is good. So I'll mix that up a little bit more. And then as always, once you've mixed your colour up, pile all into one nice, neat pile, and then use your pallet knife to split half off and pop that to the side. And then we'll do that one more time again. So we now to need to mix up the final colour in those cool orange air like scale. So this is the darkest, this is number four now that we're gonna mix. So I've got a tiny bit left on my mixing part of my palette. Now I'm gonna do repeat that final process. So a touch more red, a touch more blue, and then a little bit of the burnt umber. And by this point it's getting quite dark, which is what we want. I often like mixing up something like this as well, even, you know, these values and hues exist in all different skin tones, whether someone has lighter or darker skin tone, you might not think that it does but this could work. You know, perfectly, even if it's just for the lash line, for example, where the eyelashes are or in the pupil or the iris of the eye. So it's really important to look closely at the image that you're working with and really notice all of those different values. So even if you're working with someone with a particular skin tone, they still probably have lots of contrast and variation in there. Okay, so that's the next four for the next row, for row number two. And just as I did for the first row, I'm going to take my brush dip into the medium and then paint those four squares in.
- [Gill] Rachel's found that her number one and two in that row, the colours are quite brown already.
- They're quite dark. That's fine, as I've been saying, if they're not perfect, that's absolutely fine because it's more about working with the paint and understanding how it works. I often find, for example, if I'm working with a paint for the first time from a particular brand I'm kind of getting used to the pigments because some brands might have stronger pigments than others. So if it's not perfect, that's okay. It's more about understanding how you got there. So if you're finding that it's already quite black and dark, then maybe scoop that up, save it and paint in those two first squares, and then maybe mix up a new colour for the next two squares. If it's already so dark that you can't go any darker. Otherwise what you could do and this is something that I'll just say generally as well, is if you want to, if you feel like you've got as dark as you can, with those four colours together, try mixing burnt amber with cobalt blue, just those two colours together. And then just put that in maybe by itself on a square somewhere and make a little note of what that is because I find that that's a really fantastic black substitute. It's something about those two colours. They go together so nice. It doesn't have to be cobalt blue either, ultramarine blue works really well as well. So if you've got, say two or three colours straightaway that are already really dark, try mixing up those two together, just to have that scale, it might, it will look nice. And it will also teach you about how you got there. And just remember to wipe your brush in between as well. So they're not contaminating. Okay, so that's my four colours in there. I'm gonna quickly make a note for myself of what that is, and then next we're going into the pinks. So because I'm working with cool pigments, they're still gonna be cool, but instead of being cool orange this time, it's going to be cool pink. So we ready to move on, cool. Okay, so these colours are really good for the parts of the face with more blood in the face. So if we're thinking things like the lips, the cheeks, the nose, I also find that the ears are really good for more pinky colours because for example, like if the sunlight is hitting from behind the face and because the cartilage in the ear is so thin, you can see the, the bright red of the ear. So kind of more bonier parts of the face, the oranges work really well. Then having more colour through the pink is where you really start to see a face really glow and have some nice natural luminous values and hues come through. So also another thing, I'm sure people have been doing it, but in case you haven't, I've been using a baby wipe and I've been at the very end of each row, just wipe that clean, where we are mixing. Even though we're working with the same colours, it's still good to try and keep things tidy because one little bit of contamination and it can totally change the way that your, your paint looks.
- [Gill] I think that might have been half my problem. Pretty messy when I paint the house too.
- I'm not usually this neat and tidy, but I feel much better when I am. So, because it's the same three colours, the process is basically the same. The only difference is the quantities again. So we're still gonna start with lemon yellow, still a generous amount because lemon yellow's quite weak, but this time the starting orange that we wanna get is gonna be much more of a red than an orange. So this time we can add a little bit more, alizarin Crimson than we did last time, but I would suggest if you are not familiar with the paints that you're working with, for example, just add the same amount as you did for the first two rows. And then add a little bit more again, incrementally until you get to a nice, more ready orange, as opposed to yellowy orange. That's what I'm gonna do. So I've added the same amount of red as last time. It's getting me to that nice yellow orange. And then I'm gonna add a little bit more again and you'll see how it changes it.
- [Gill] Do you always mix on tiles, Melissa?
- Yeah, this is my preferred method. I used to, actually it's something that goes all the way back to high school. I think it was just the school bought them all because loads of students and it's cheap and it's more practical. And then I found, you know, you go to an art store and it's 20 or $30 for a plastic pallet and they're a little bit wobbly and not super durable and they're so expensive. And the way I get through pallets, they just, if I get lazy and don't clean it, it's basically, it's hard to clean it. So I go to Bunnings or any kind of hardware store, buy a big box of 20 tiles for $20. And I've only ever had to buy that once and they've lasted me years. So as long as it's non porous, it's I find something that's a little bit more glossy even a colour that isn't white is great 'cause you've got contrast. And yeah, they're much cheaper. They're more durable, they're not plastic. So I like tiles or glass, works really well as well. So that's starting orange. It's much more of a ready pink as opposed to a yellow but there's still no blue in it yet. It's still far too saturated. So I'm going to add my little pin size amount of blue again.
- [Gill] Julian uses the old glass shelves out of fridges and paints some grey on the back.
- Oh great.
- [Gill] So that's pretty great.
- That's actually a really good idea.
- [Gill] A good tip.
- Yeah, I think I've used quite a lot of my parents' old tiles out of the garage. Hopefully they're not looking for them.
- [Gill] Probably now.
- But glass is great as well. Okay, so I've added those three colours together again, the only difference this time is my quantity of red is a little bit more so it's more of a a pinky red as opposed to a or pinky red orange as opposed to a yellow orange. So that's my number one in row three. And as you can see, if you look at the, oh yeah, we've got the, the camera and the tile. Some these are looking quite similar, especially kind of around here but the undertones are different and that's, what's important. So when I add white to this, you'll notice it'll suddenly start getting, the pink undertones will come through because it's got more red in it. So same processes are very first row. We're gonna add white progressively. So I'll take little pea size amount of white again, mix that in. And as you can see, it's much more pink than previously. The first row is much more orange, but this is much more pink. Hopefully that's translating on the camera. I'm actually going to add a touch more red as well and feel free to do this. Just you're constantly adjusting and noticing, you know, as you add other colours you might find that you need to balance things out by adding something else. So there we go. That's a really nice pinky rose kind of colour. That would work really nice on cheeks or on lips. I'm gonna take half of that and pop that to the side.
- [Gill] Abby, we had a little bit of the cobalt blue in there too, didn't we?
- Yes, so the starting point for all of the colours that we're mixing is the same process. Lemon yellow, then red, then a touch of blue. But the quantities for this row is a little bit different because we're adding a bit more red, which is what makes it more of a cool pink as opposed to a cool orange. Okay, so I've just mixed up my third colour and I'm gonna add white one final time. Actually be quite generous with the white for the last colour because I often find that I never make something bright enough. And then when I actually come to painting, I need to just dip directly into my white. So sometimes the real bright highlights in a face they'll look white. They're not white, they're still a skin tone with, it's just very, very bright but it's not pure white. But if you think if you're painting on a white pallet or canvas, what looks bright is still very dark compared to the white of the background. So try and maybe mix up something that is almost white, but just tinted slightly skin tone. So that's what I've got there. I've got my next four colours and these are now more pink toned. I'm gonna wipe my palette clean, not the colours I've saved the part of the palette that I'm mixing and then wipe my brush. Just be aware because we've just mixed up some dark colours and now we're going into lighter colours. Make sure your brush now is quite clean. So I'm actually gonna grab some solvent. I don't often do this, but I will while it's right here. And just quickly dip into that, just to get any of that dark excess off because we're going into lighter values now. And then I'll dip back into my medium and paint those next four squares in. It's really good to do this practise before we get into the painting as well, because even just painting these squares is a good practise if you're not familiar with oil painting with how the medium works with the brush and the painting and the oils. I find that if you kind of load your brush up with the paint and medium, you'll find that it's much easier to get the nice, neat edges of this square. And it's also going to be sucked up by the fabric of the canvas. If you're finding that where as you're painting these squares in that there's a lot of texture of the canvas that's still poking through. It's probably because you don't have enough medium. So this is a good exercise as well to practise those quantities and the ratios. And that's that next row. I quickly make a note of what that is.
- [Gill] Jesse just asked what the medium is that you are using. It was medium one, wasn't it?
- Yes, so I use number one Medium by Art Spectrum. So it's just a thin medium. It's one that I like to use, but any kind of thinner medium works well. Okay. Now we'll move onto the pink tones but for mid to dark, if you're still filling that in, don't worry, we'll, I'll spend just a couple minutes talking through the next row while everyone catches up, if you need to. But same process again. So this is now basically a replication of our row two, but instead of being cool orange, mid to dark, it's cool pink mid to dark. So this is really good for, again, lips, cheeks, nose, but more for if those areas are in the shadows. So you'll see when we get into the painting demo, half of the face is in shadow. So half of the lips, for example, will be using the cool pinks from the light part of this, the palette. And then the other half that's more in shadow will be from this darker pinks. So even though some of these colours that we mix up might start to look similar to the cool oranges, because they're both very dark. One is going to have an orangey undertone. One's gonna have a pinker undertone. That's why we use the pinky ones on the lips and the cheeks, even though they're still in shadow. That's what's, it's about having those nice subtleties, which is gonna create a really nice luminous and natural looking portrait. So same process. We're gonna start with our first three colours to mix up a orange, that's a little bit more red, and because we're going into the dark, we want it to be slightly darker than colour number one from our row number three. So I'm taking yellow to start and add the same amount of red, if not a touch more as you did for the previous first colour. So same amount of red, if not a little bit more as colour number one for row number three. And it should be like a nice rich red reddy orange. So at the moment, I still just have two colours in, but as we've been doing throughout this afternoon, we're gonna add blue. So the same amount of a little touch of blue pinhead size, mix that up. And that will be our colour number one for row number four. This is going from light well, mid to dark in the more pinky toned colours. So once that's mixed up, scoop up half and pop that to the side, and now we are gonna, with what we've got left we are gonna make that darker.
- [Gill] Yes, Evelyn, just a tiny pinhead bit of blue.
- Yes, pinhead bit of blue. And so, as I've been saying, the process for darkening a colour, it's not as simple as just adding one more colour to make it darker. It's not like adding white to make a colour lighter. So basically the same process is what we use to make our cool oranges darker. We're gonna use to make these cool pinks darker. So because our starting colour, which is we are using the leftover colour from colour number one, because that has a higher ratio of red than which we used for the cool oranges it's still going to be more pinky undertone when we make this darker. But same process to make it darker we're gonna start by adding a pinhead size of red and a pinhead size of blue. And that will be what we do for the second colour. It's not until colours three and four that we start adding the burnt under. So first we're just making it a little bit more purple. So a little bit more red and a little bit more blue, added into that leftover colour, mix that up. And because we've already got quite a lot of red in here straight away you'll start noticing that it's starting to become more purple. It's a really beautiful colour. It works really well if someone has lipstick on, for example it's still a nice natural colour without, you know, it's easy if someone's wearing a red lip or kind of a maroon or purple lip to mix up a colour that is purple without any yellow or other skin tone colours in there and it looks far too unnatural. Whereas even if somebody is wearing makeup, for example, it still is a natural skin tone. It's just much more of a more saturated skin tone, unless it's something like bright orange or bright blue but something like this works beautifully for like a dark red lip or if the part of the face is in shadow, for example. So if yours is looking more purplely or quite red, that's good, that's kind of what we're going for at this stage. So I've mixed that up. This is colour number two in row number four, and I'm popping half of that onto the pallet where I'm saving all of my paints and I've got a little bit left. And with what I've got left, I'm now gonna mix up colour number three in row number four. And the next step is to do the same thing as we did before. We're gonna add a touch of red again, and a touch of blue again but instead of stopping there, we're gonna add a little bit of blue as well, sorry, a little bit of umber as well. I added a little bit too much burnt amber. If you do that, if you add a little bit too much burnt number or too much blue because we've saved extra colours on the side here, you can pick up again from the colour that you've already mixed up. So what I did, because I noticed I added a little bit too much, I just picked back up from my second colour, my colour number two in row number four, and added that back into that mix. And it's just, it's lighted it a little bit more but there's still room for me to go darker again. So I've mixed that up. That's a nice rich, almost purplely brown or reddy brown. And I've put that to the side and then to go darker again, it's the same process. So a little bit more alizarin, a little bit more blue and a little bit more burnt amber. And by this point, because we've pretty much gotten rid of all of the yellow, there's not much yellow left now the colour is going to be almost black. It's going to be a really nice black substitute. And this works fantastic for those really dark parts of the face. So think the pupils, the nostrils, especially just a touch. If you go, if you were to get black, straight out of the tube and paint the nostrils black, that's gonna look really intense and probably quite scary but this is a really great way of getting a really dark, rich colour, but using those same colours that you've used to paint the whole other parts of the face. So it's going to work. It's not gonna look that dark as if you were to just use black. So I've got those next four colours and I'm gonna make sure my brush is thoroughly clean and then paint those four squares into the next row. So this is now row number four. So it might not sure how well that's translating, but these two, well, this first column, these colours look very similar to each other, and you might notice that they do, but if you look closely and I guess the thing about painting portraits is you kind of pick up that sensitivity to those different hues and different subtle differences in colour. So even though they do look very similar, I can still see how different they are. I can see that the top one is more orange and then the next one is a little bit more of a darker brown orange. And then the third column it's starting to get more red.
- [Gill] We have had a question about the amount of paint that you use, so I suppose if you're doing a larger portrait, you just mix up more paint just to take into account for that.
- Yeah, absolutely. And I generally work on smaller parts of a portrait at a time. So I don't, I'm not really one of those big messy painters where I'm working with big brushes. So for example, my Darling Prize Piece, it is a large piece, but I was still only using brushes about this kind of size. On occasion I would use a larger hog hair brush. And that's when I did have to mix up quite a lot of paint. So I was using, you know, quadruple the amount that we are mixing up now. But for the most part, I like to work in thinner layers of paint with smaller brushes. So yeah, it really depends on what you're working on but for today because we're working on quite a smaller, A4 size picture, what we're mixing up is is enough but don't be afraid to mix up more if you need to. So you can see that this jump is quite intense. That was because I added more umber than I meant to. But if that's what your palette looks like at parts, if there's sun contrast, that's totally fine. It doesn't really matter because there's an infinite amount of values in between these two colours. So if I just mix them together at a later stage, when I'm painting, then I'll be able to get the colour that's in between. Okay, so that's that fourth row. There's still two rows left, but we're only gonna fill in one more. The reason why I like to just save an extra row is because, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but that's, that's okay. If you've made up extra colours, for example or if you want to experiment with others, there's four extra squares that you can add those in. So some people they decide they wanna break the rules a bit and they wanna mix up a green because there is green in skin tone in different areas. So you can try that a bit later if you want, but we're just gonna do one more row. So I'll quickly write in the information for row number four, then we'll move on to the next row which is a little bit different. And then we'll be ready for our break before we come back for the afternoon where we do our painting. But if you want to, if you have any extra colours, for example, that you've mixed it up, maybe by mistake or that you thought were mistakes but you don't wanna get rid of them, start filling those in on that bottom four squares as well. But if you also just wanna leave them completely blank, that's absolutely fine. So row four, that is a cool pink and it's mid to dark. And for the last guided row, we are working on something a little bit different, which is grey to purple or grey slash purple. And on the PowerPoint it looks very grey. What we're mixing up today because of the type of skin tone that I'm personally working from. She has more of a purplely blue undertone. So it doesn't really matter what this is. I just find that having a good, almost monochrome neutral grey, whether that's slightly shifted towards more grey, more blue or more red is just a really great colour to have in the palette. This kind of colour appears if someone has blue or grey eyes in the eyes, it often appears under the eyes in little shadows or where there might be the skin might be more thin. And the veins of someone's skin is showing through, if someone has facial hair, then what you would call like the five o'clock shadow that part of the face is gonna be more grey. So this colour it's something that you wouldn't often think of as being in skin tone, but it's really there. And I often find that as well. The colours that we've mixed up so far, these 16 colours, some at some points, they might still be far too saturated. So I like to dip into my greys and my purples, and then mix back into these really saturated skin tones. And it just dolls it down a little bit. So even though we're mixing up separate colours, don't use them in isolation. It's really good to look at your reference and think actually the perfect colour is a mix between two or three of these other colours and blend them together. So there's not really any way to go wrong with this. I kind of just mix all the colours together and create a really dark colour and then add white to it. But I will speak through a bit of a bit of logic through it so that it makes sense.
- [Gill] The Amber listed in the PowerPoint was burnt amber, wasn't it?
- Yes
- [Gill] The same colours we've been using.
- Yes. So same kind of process. We're still gonna start with the yellow, the red and the blue, but because we're going for something that is a bit more purple as opposed to orange toned. If you think we are kind of making something, that's a bit of a complimentary something that's gonna doll down the Chrome if we need to. we are gonna start with red this time, as opposed to starting with yellow. So I'm taking up about a pea size amount of red this time, and then rather than adding yellow into it, because we're making a purple, I'm going to add blue to it. And this time you can add, depending on what, how you would've by this point hopefully worked out how strong your blue is because my blue is still quite strong. I'm taking just less than a pea size amount. If you're working with say a ultramarine blue, which is really, really strong, you might need less. If you're working with something else, you might need more, but mostly red. And then a little bit of blue till you get this really deep kind of violet colour. And then, because I always just play this by ear at this point, I'm just gonna work it out as I go. Maybe add a bit more blue. Yeah, I think that's good. And a good way to check when you're mixing a colour, that by itself is really, really dark. Just kind of flatten it out, scrape it over the, the palette and you can see the undertone. So I can see that that is a nice undertone that I'm going for. Now to make it more grey, as opposed to just pure purple. I'm gonna add a little bit of yellow and brown into it. So start with the yellow, not too much, because then it's gonna kind of go a bit too green if you have too much blue in it, for example. But just enough to bump the chroma down. So again, it really depends on how strong your yellow is. Lemon yellow is quite weak, so I'm just progressively adding really small amounts until it becomes a little bit more dull. But this is probably the hardest step to get wrong because you're really just, it's almost like when you're a kid and you just mix all the colours together.
- [Gill] It's a perfect one.
- Yeah. And then the last step, I'm just gonna add a bit more of the burnt amber which you might have already done. So that's the colour that we are left with and it's a really rich, dark colour. It's almost over the camera it looks quite ready purple, but in person it's really, really rich and dark. It's another good substitute for black, depending on what the undertone is that you're working with. Actually, I want to add a bit more blue to it. Okay. So that's the first colour in the fifth row. I'm gonna pop that to the side and then with what I've got left, I'm going to progressively add white in. So we're gonna have a dark and then two kind of mid tones and then a bright. So we're going from dark to bright, but quite dramatically, 'cause we're only spreading this over four squares as opposed to eight. So you can see that's that it's almost like this movie purple. It's kind of hard to see because we were mixing up something so dark. It's almost a bit of a surprise when you add the white 'cause you get to see the undertones come through. It's up to you at this point. As you can see on the screen that the PowerPoint that's quite grey, this is quite purple and that's because I haven't added so much yellow into it or so much brown. Depending on the reference photo that you're working from, if you're not seeing these kind of purple colours, but you're seeing maybe more greys add a little bit more yellow and a little bit more brown to get more of a, a dollar kind of saturated colour. I'm gonna add mine in at this point as well, just to do it down a little bit more. And then save that so half of that, and then I'm going to add white two more times. Okay. So that's those last four colours I'm going to quickly paint them in. And this isn't an exhaustive grid of all of the skin tones that exist. There's so much more going on than what we've just mixed up over the last or however long it's been, but it's not exhaustive. It's just, hopefully by now you've got a good idea of some the techniques that you can use and remember as well that we've well, especially well, at least me, I've been working with cool colours. I've been working with alizarin crimson and yellow and lemon yellow, and then my blue is cobalt blue, but I could mix up a totally different palette again, if I used three different types of primary colours. So if I use those cadmiums for example, they would be slightly different again. And then even though I've mixed up this purplely grey at the end, it's not the only type of, kind of strange or unusual additional colour that you might want to mix. So, as I was saying a little bit earlier at the very beginning, I like to traditionally use a green undertone value underpainting at the very start of a portrait that I make. So while I love doing these Alla Prima style quick paintings, they're still gonna look very saturated because we don't have like an underpainting underneath. So in addition to something like a purple, if you've still got those four squares underneath, when we stop for a break, you might like to mix up say more of a green grey and add that in as well. So this isn't an exhaustive list of skin tones, but it is typically the palette that I like to use for most of the paintings that I work on and, yeah.
- [Gill] And the colours that we had in that last lot was pretty much everything, wasn't, it? In various different capacities
- Yeah it's like you mix everything together.
- [Gill] Yeah.
- I've heard that there is something that some artists do where they, at the very end of their painting day, where they've got all of those colours left on their palette, they'll mix everything together. And it makes what is apparently called elephant grey. And then they use that to prime their canvases for their next painting. So it doesn't waste all of that leftover excess paint.
- [Gill] There's, a good tip.
- Yeah. But that concludes the first half of the workshop, which is all the, a lot of information is quite information intense, but this afternoon will be really enjoyable because that's when we get to do our painting and put all of this hard work into practise and see what we make.
- [Gill] Terrific. Well, Mel, we've got, we've sort of just hit nearly quarter to three. How long would you like to have a little break for before we come back in?
- I honestly don't mind.
- [Gill] So maybe 15 minutes.
- 15 minutes, yeah.
- And we start again.
- Yeah,
- [Gill] Yeah.
- Yeah, that sounds good.
- That sounds great. In the meantime, if people would like to hold up their mixes. Oh, we have a question. Shall we clean pallets for the next session?
- Save all of the paint that you've mixed up. So if you've got little kind of excess mess, every in little parts, you can tidy that up, but all of the paint that you've mixed up, we're gonna use that in the afternoon.
- Okay, all right sounds good. Well, we might even just break for 10 minutes. Just to give people a chance to go to the bathroom. Grab a cup of tea if you'd like, or continue to mix colours, we can see you all up. I'm sorry, I'm doing the worst camera work in the world. We can see you all up on the screen behind us and see you all working hard on those, that mixing, which is absolutely fantastic. So if you have any other questions, please continue to shoot them through. I'm trying to feed as many as I can to Mel, as we go. Otherwise we may have Hector correct me if I'm wrong. We may have a few little time lapse videos that we might be able to roll off bell, doing some of her painting, which might get you excited for the next session when we're gonna jump into it. So grab a cup of tea. If you need it, go to the bathroom quickly and we'll see you all back here. Ready to go in 10 minutes, time at five to three. Okay, see you soon. I thought I'd come back in a little bit earlier. I know that don't panic everyone. If you can hear this in the background and you're halfway through your cup of tea, but we had quite a few questions coming through on the Zoom chat. So I thought we might throw a few of you, the questions at you, Mel, while we're waiting to come back in. Somebody has asked if we could get a list of the brushes that you use.
- I can give you a list of the ones I have here. The ones that I get are typically not super expensive brushes. I try to look after them as best as I can, but I find that no matter what I do, I can't seem to get my brushes to last, hopefully that there's other, maybe some other people out there that have tips as well, that they could share with me, but how to not get my brushes ruined so much. But I think probably the main reason is because I like to use synthetic brushes. And because I'm working with oils, I think they're a little bit less durable. So hog hair brushes, for example, they last much better when you're working with solvents or thinners. But the brushes that I have today are just some basic jazz art flat and round brushes. And they're synthetic ones. I use quite small brushes. So maybe I'll hold these up to the camera so that people can see. They're quite yeah, they're quite small. I do like a combination of flat and round though, yeah.
- [Gill] Terrific thank you.
- But I'm that much of a brush snob. I don't really know much about brushes as long as they work and they feel good. I get through them too quick.
- Yeah, I think you may have mentioned this in, when we were mixing the second last row, but what colour would you use on that pallet that we've just mixed for the inside of nostrils?
- I'm not sure what to call it, but probably row number four and then colour number four. So like or although mine isn't quite dark enough, but if I was to keep progressively going darker again, either like the, a really dark orange or really dark pink. Because if you think the nose has a lot of blood vessels in it so it's probably gonna be more pinky toned than orange, but it's one of those that is really dark.
- [Gill] Okay, and if you were to use a green, which green would you use?
- I would mix up my own green. So it's probably the best way to do it would be using, with the palette that I'm working with today it would be with blue and burnt amber to create a black, but a blue tone black and then mix yellow into that and then to create a green that way. But if I was in my studio, I would mix up yellow okra and Mars black. Mars black is like a blue black. And that is what I used to create my Verdaccio under paintings. And then from that I add white.
- [Gill] We had a few questions about the Verdaccio.
- Yeah.
- [Gill] And whether or not you do a workshop, an online workshop for in Verdaccio for us. So yeah we'll have to try and work that one out. We'll have a chat to Robert. He's the one who's organising our workshops but.
- Yeah, 'cause I so this workshop usually goes in conjunction with my Verdaccio workshop, which I teach in Perth, but I haven't done that online before, but yeah.
- Do you do other online courses as well?
- No, well, it's more about a case of having resources like this, to be able to do something online. 'Cause this is working so well today because we've got so many amazing staff and people knowing what they're doing, all the lighting and the cameras, but I have no idea where to begin setting this up at my own studio, but I'd love to.
- [Gill] Terrific. And I think that's probably all of the questions. Oh, we had a question for the tech guys. Hector, is it possible to switch just to the overhead camera for people who'd like to see the finished palette. please. Thank you.
- Wait, trying to find the.
- [Gill] You could probably just leave it on the table and if you just pop it down on the table, Mel. And then he can zoom into it.
- [Melissa] Yeah.
- [Gill] So there we go. So maybe if you could refresh people's just refresh people's memory.
- [Melissa] Yeah, so we've got the blank space at the bottom. You might have filled some things in there just if you had add some additional colours. But we've got the oranges at the top, which is great for those points in the face where there's less blood. So the bonier part. So it it's almost the order of a face here. We've got the top of the face. This works good for the forehead or for cheekbones. This works great for the centre of the face because it's more pinky toned. These are our cool pinks and then the greys or the purples work really good for the lower part of the face, especially if someone has facial hair. But these obviously that's not a hard and fast rule. You can work with these colours all over the face.
- Terrific, well I think that's hit five to three. Don't panic anybody if you're, if you're not back from your tea or you need to go and take in some of the lovely sunshine, which I hope you're enjoying wherever you are. Although some people from overseas have messages say it's the middle of the night. It's a bit hard for them to see how to make their colours. But thank you so much for joining us. The recording will be available on our website a little bit after the programme and is a already available on Facebook live. So if you'd like to get it sooner than the next couple of days and we'll have the workshop up on our website, then you can always jump on Facebook live and have a look back at the previous recording, which will be on there as well. So let's get back into it, painting.
- Great so we're working now on the portrait, so you'll all have your own picture that you're working from and hopefully you've, pre-drawn a sketch onto your canvas. I've pre-drawn a sketch onto mine. If you wanted to practise this later on as well, you can also will have give you access to this image. Just a few little pointers in terms of how to approach a portrait if you haven't done one before, try and visualise the face in this kind of a manner on the PowerPoint. So what I've done is on the PowerPoint. You can see that image where I've drawn almost like this counter drawing over the portrait where we've got looking at shapes of light and dark. So that's something that you can also do. If you've got a pencil, you can draw some sketches or shapes of light and dark onto your reference photo. I'm going to have that on my screen as I paint so that I can see that. But a few little tips. So you can draw that onto your portrait to refer to, but also just generally think about your big shapes first. So rather than going straight into the eyes and the nose and the mouth try and just stick to the left side or the right side of the face. I like to start on the side of the face that is in light. So if you've got a bright cheekbone, for example, begin there. The next thing is to then think about the fat over lean rule. So if you're working with acrylic, this won't apply to you, but if you're working with oil paint, fat paint has more oil in it thin or lean paint has more solvent in it or medium that you've mixed in. So begin by using more medium added to the paint. So you're working with thinner layers. Then as you build up more confidence in knowing the placement of the skin tone, you can add thicker paint on top. Otherwise if you're going straight in with thick paint, it's gonna be hard, if you make a mistake. Otherwise you just have to scrape off the paint and begin again. Also, in addition to just sticking with those big shapes, work in one area at a time. So it's very tempting to jump from one part of the face to the next thinking that, you know, the value or the colour that you're adding to the cheekbone is the same as the highlight on the nose. But because our eye plays tricks on us, we think that there is similarities and they're the same, but there's a lot of difference between what might be on one part of the face to the other. So the best advice that I have stick to one area and work out, kind of expand out of that area, closing in on the nose and the eyes and the mouth. Okay, so I'm going to get started on this picture and we can ask some questions as we go and I'll talk through my process as well. It's really worth spending all that time. That's not my medium, at the start doing all that work on mixing those skin tones because then the process of painting goes much more smoothly. So, you know, you can spend all that time and then you've kind of got the luxury then laid out for you. You don't have to worry about mixing up anything new. I'm going to begin on the cheekbone that is on the left side of the portrait. Which is the brightest value. And so thinking through it logically because we're working on a part of the face, that is a high point and it is there's more bone than blood in terms of, it's not like this bright cheek that's blushing. I'm gonna work from the brightest value from my top row, which is the cool orange. And as I predicted, I need it to be even brighter than what I mixed. So I'm making a brighter one as well by just mixing up some more white into that brightest value. I'm not really practising what I preach here, but a good little tip as well is start with a bigger brush then a teeny tiny brush. So for example, a little brush might be like a, a number one or a 0.5, but a wedge brush is probably something good to start with because it can make you think in shape as opposed to line. And so rather than jumping from the highlight on the cheek to another part of the face that has a highlight as well, I'm just gonna, I'm forcing myself to just sit with this area for now. And yeah, painting and shape as opposed to painting in line. I guess that's the main difference between drawing and painting is in in drawing you're typically, unless you're working with something like charcoal that really forces you to look for shape, there's more of an emphasis online as opposed to, as opposed to shape. Whereas with painting, it's really important to look for those shapes of value and colour.
- [Gill] This is one of the things that we, we couldn't pre-think about really when it came to camera angles was this idea of the fact that the mixing of the paint was so important. And everybody's gonna wanna see that at the same time as you painting. So we've got two separate camera angles that we're sort of hectares madly cutting between the two. So hopefully that people are getting that sense of how the paint is going onto your brush, but then it's also being laid onto the canvas.
- Yeah, and I usually find it's the first, like 10, 15 minutes of a painting that I'm also still, there's a difference between mixing up the paint and then transferring onto the canvas. So the first 10, 15 minutes, I'm still also mixing in between all the colours that I've mixed you know, previously, but once I get into that flow. It goes much more quickly. I always find that the cheekbone, which tends to be the brightest part of the face, just because it's generally the way that I angle my models is I get them to have a three quarter pose where they're looking turn slightly away from the camera, with the light hitting that part of the face. So that the cheek bone is really where they're reflecting a lot of light. And I always find I need to kind of keep building the paint up in that area to get it really bright, which I actually don't mind kind of returning to that because it actually works quite nicely to have parts of the face that are in highlight where the paint is a little bit thicker. If you think, you know, thicker paint is kind of gonna give the illusion that it's reflecting because there's texture to it. So even though we've spent all that time mixing paints and until you actually get into the painting as well, there'll be certain colours that you find that you need, that you haven't mixed up. So I'm just going in under her eye and I'm noticing that it needs to be a little bit more bluey, bluey brown purple than what I've mixed up. So I've just mixed in a little bit more blue into one of my browns. And then also just diluted that a bit with some purple.
- [Gill] Mel, do you always work from photo references or do you sometimes work from life as well?
- [Melissa] I do a bit of both. So I'm currently working on a portrait for the chief justice for the Supreme court in Australia, in Western Australia.
- [Gill] Oh, how exciting.
- [Melissa] Very exciting. But obviously he's not available to sit in my studio for eight hours a day. So for for him, I got him to come in a couple of times and we did a few sittings in person. And that's also just because I don't know him in the same way that I know, you know, a friend or someone that I might paint from live or from a photo. So I find that it's important that I have that one-on-one interaction to be able to get to know them. And even just things like talking and having a conversation, you learn about the way that their mouth work mouth moves and their muscles in their face move when they speak or interact. So you only get certain information from a photo that being said. I love photos as a reference. I'm not opposed to photos at all. I'm relying on images that I took of him to be able to complete the portrait. But that being said, I also rely on the fact that I've met him and spoken with him to be able to get something that is lifelike and accurate. So that's also the reason why I kind of shy away from commissions where I'm not allowed, or they don't want me to meet the person. So if someone's passed away, so I literally physically can't meet the subject or if it's a surprise birthday gift or something, and they don't want to know that I'm painting them. I typically don't like doing those kind of commissions, 'cause I do think it's important to meet someone in person before painting them.
- [Gill] We should say this reference photograph is a friend of yours, isn't she?
- [Melissa] Yes, so actually Micca, who is the lady that I'm painting is a great artist herself. She is called Micca's Art, M-I-C-C-A art on Instagram. She just is kind of like a surrealist artist. She does amazing kind of almost hyper real caricatures and dreamlike landscapes from her mind. But I wanted to use her as a subject because I knew that she would know what I was looking for when it comes to finding an appropriate image. So, you know, she's aware that I would need a certain angle, for example, in certain lighting and being able to get that was important. But definitely check out her work, if you're looking for other artists, especially Australian artists to follow. So I'm not going into the details of the eye yet, but I am just shaping around the eyelid or the space between the top of the eye and the bottom of the brow. I actually find that this is one of my favourite parts of the face to work on. I just think it's, there's so many different shadows and things going on there that it's I always find it quite satisfying to sculpt this part of the face out, but I'm still saving those little details for towards the end of the portrait. In terms of that, the iris, the individual hairs of the eye eyelashes, the pupil that will come later.
- [Gill] Gay is despairing that her colour swatches are all too orange and she thinks she'll have to start all over again.
- No, not at all. If obviously half if all of it is very orange, then half of it is still usable. Sometimes just adding a little bit more yellow to the other colours is enough to just tint it. If also if that's the case of the actual painting itself, if the whole painting is starting to look too orange, it's probably because another part of the face needs more pink. So I started with my more yellowy tones, but I kind of reasonably quickly moved towards the cheek that is under the eye because there's more pink there. And so, because I've got that contrast in between orange and or yellowy oranges and pinks quite early on, it's starting to balance it out. So it's really is all about balance and it doesn't take much at all to shift the pigments that you've got. So if it's starting to feel a little bit too orange, just add a little bit more yellow into the colours that you've mixed in and that will be enough to just quickly shift it back to where it needs to be.
- [Gill] And on Facebook has asked how many layers of oil paint you do when painting a studio portrait.
- Probably minimum four or five. So the first, if that counts the very first layer, typically I would do a sketch at the start and I wouldn't use transfer paper like I have this time I would sit down and more methodically go through sketching usually with charcoal or drawing on, and then I'll set that. And then, so I don't know if that would count as a layer, but that's kind of my first sketch. Then I would go in with acrylic paint and I use this as kind of sketch number two, but it's in acrylic as opposed to oil. And I teach this in my Verdaccio workshop before we even get into doing green. I get everybody to do a painting in acrylic. And I word this in a way of it's almost like it's a warmup in the same way that athletes warm up. I feel like as painters, we also need to warm up before we start painting with something like oils, which is quite a difficult medium to work with if you immediately step off on the wrong foot. So if I'm working on a studio portrait, that's quite important, I'll start with an acrylic sketch where I'm working out values. That's still just working in lights and darks not colour yet. And then once I've done that, and that will usually take me maybe a day I'll then do my Verdaccio under painting. And that will, depending on how much detail I want, that could take up to a week to get that Verdaccio painting under painting complete. Once that's finished, I then go over in colour, which is what we're doing now. So I'll go over with the same amount of detail, but with in colour, it's not gonna be ultra detailed yet. It's more just tinting it away from green, back into natural skin tone. And then, so that would be layer number three, then the fourth and fifth layers is, would be my glazing layer. So that's when I use liquin. Which is a really nice, almost gel-like medium. And it almost starts to give this glossy effect and I go over the painting and that's when I start getting more of those details in. So working out, you know, little pores or of the skin, little flex of light individual hairs in the brows, for example. So yeah, usually minimum four layers. I used to paint like a printer, you know, where you've got like a tiny little brush and you wrote, do it section by section or line by line. And that was my process for, you know, a long time, because again, never being classically trained, I was just kind of logically going through it and thinking, how do I create portrait or just approach it piece by piece with this little brush. Then I started getting very tired of that and that pressure of wanting things to look perfect straight away. Now I'm the complete opposite. I work section by section through layers and I build up more and more detail as I go, as opposed to trying to get that perfect straight away.
- [Gill] Kelly's wondering how long it takes to do a complete portrait.
- It changes, so I guess it depends on what you consider a portrait as well. So something like this, I like to do in between one to two hours. So if we've got an hour this afternoon, realistically, I could get this done to a point that it's gonna be a sketch and an exercise. But in terms of my commission, I've, for example, I've quoted the Supreme court four months, four to six months really to get something like that done, but that is my prime priority at the moment. So I'm not really working on an awful lot of other jobs while I'm working on that, but kind of a couple of months. And it's I mean, that's a huge job. It's got a lot of detail and it's quite a large picture. So something smaller might only take me half that time. And I think it's also funny that you spend just as much time thinking about the portrait and staring at it as you do painting it maybe more. And I still kind of consider that work 'cause you're still working it out. So that's always a bit of a tricky question to answer.
- [Gill] Yes, how long is a piece of string?
- [Melissa] Yeah.
- [Gill] So nice to see so many faces up on our big screen busily creating. You've got a fan in, Shannon Taylor.
- [Melissa] Oh, hi Shannon. She's an old school friend of mine.
- [Gill] She's very proud of you.
- [Melissa] Thank you, Shannon.
- [Gill] Nick's asked, how did you find entering portrait competitions for the first time.
- [Melissa] As in what's the experience been like or.
- [Gill] I think so.
- Yeah, I've actually been kind of a fan of portrait prizes for a long time. So I'm 23 now, but I think I entered my first one when I was maybe like 13 and that was the lesser prize in Perth, but through obviously their youth prize and I was very excited. I got into the youth prize and then from there I ended, ended up entering every year and I think I got in every year up until I was 18. And then I think I was a little bit cocky and thought, oh yeah, I'm gonna get in the first year of being an adult when I'm 18, but it took me a good few goes, obviously like the standard and also the pool of people that you're against. And it's not even a reflection on the standard of the work, but it's about, you know, having the right group of judges as well as, you know, being able to work with something that is maybe relevant to the time period that you're working with. So it's all, you know, it, prizes are tricky in the sense that there's not one right way of, or a rule about how you can get in. You just have to keep trying. So I think I entered the Lester three times. I managed to become semi-finalist three or yeah, I think two or three times in that time, but I never got into the main prize. Last year I finally got into the main prize of the Lester and then entered the Darling because I saw a friend had entered the Darling Prize in the first year. And at that point I missed that deadline, but yeah, it's just, it's one of those things that I, I will always enter, but, and if you get in, it's an amazing, amazing privilege and amazing bonus to your career and you've got to enjoy it and then make the most of it. But you also can't put all of your kind of self worth into prizes. I know that it's tricky for artists to spend, you know, months and months working on pictures, hoping that they'll become a finalist. But if there was a different set of judges on a different day that might get in. Or it might not.
- [Gill] We definitely see those variations in the exhibits over the years from our Darling Portrait Prize and our National Photographic Portrait Prize, there are definite elements that come in and that's the reason we change our judges each year as well for those prizes, because it brings in that variety makes it a little bit less predictable.
- Yeah, exactly. And the thing that I absolutely love about the Darling Prize, which is why I'm so excited and pleased to be involved is the fact that I've, in my experience since being involved, there's been such an emphasis on the artist and the story of the subject, as opposed to say the celebrity status of the subject or the, or the celebrity status of the artist. So a bit of a theme with all of the, the subjects that I've noticed is that they seem to be personal friends or mentors, or just ordinary people, but with extraordinary stories. And that makes it such an accessible prize for so many people. Because, you know, I think, I can't remember the name of the artist, which is a shame, but hope, maybe someone can find who the artist is. But one of the pictures that I love in the prize is of their postman. You know, the picture of the postman or the post lady.
- [Gill] Tony Salsby.
- [Melissa] Tony Salsby. Yeah I Love that work. I never got to meet Tony though, unfortunately.
- [Gill] We met him at the launch. He's a real character. He speaks really well about that work too.
- Yeah, oh no I did meet him, yes. I met so many people that night. It's been a bit of a whirlwind and you always think, did I meet you or have I met your subject? And sometimes you'll be walking through the gallery and you'll see the subject and you'll recognise them and you think, oh my gosh it's you.
- [Gill] We love freaking people out by running up to them and saying. Oh, hello so and so when they've never met us before, but we've just seen their portrait in here on the admin side of the prizes. And we might get Georgina or Robert to drop a link into the Darling Portrait Prize into the chats on both channels. So that after this finishes, you can go and have a look at all of the finalists for this year. I think it's an important point that you mentioned about that personal connection with the subject that you're painting as well. We often find that some of the best portraits that we have in the permanent collection at the portrait gallery are ones that have that real strength of connection between the artist and the sitter.
- Yeah.
- [Gill] So I suppose it's why it's so important that for you to meet a person that you're painting.
- Yeah, and I think, you know, as a teenager, I spent a lot of time painting, you know, celebrities. Like I think the first piece that I entered into the Lester Prize was of Heath ledger And it's just a photograph that's been replicated. And then as an older teenager, I started painting friends or drawing friends. And then I moved onto a lot of self portraits because I think obviously, you know yourself better than anybody else. But it was a way I was just too scared at that point to approach people and say, can I paint you? But I did recognise it. There's so much more value getting that you get out of painting someone that, you know, and then I just started thinking, you know, it doesn't actually have to be some extraordinary person in the sense that, you know, they've had this stereotypical, made a stereotypical achievements. Some of the best portraits that I've paid painted are people that might think of themselves as ordinary, but in my eyes and in the eyes of everyone that speaks them and knows them, they have an extraordinary story. So I think, yeah the Darling Prize has been amazing for that to really highlight the fact that we're all worthy of being subjects of artworks. I haven't really gotten into my shadows yet too much. I'm starting to get there now as I work around the hairline, but I will move into there soon. And you'll find as well, if you're, depending on what you're working on, that once you start adding in that contrast with the shadows, that's when the structure of the face really starts coming out.
- [Gill] We have about half an hour to go now.
- [Melissa] Okay.
- [Gill] Hopefully we might see some creations from the people on the screen today entering into the Darling Portrait Prize. The next time we run it.
- Yeah. Well, when I run this workshop yesterday at the Portrait Gallery, but it was in person and something that was awesome is seeing how different everyone's, I guess, brush work and style is and approach to mark making, but they were all painting this same subject, but some of the works that people were doing, the way that they were handling their brushes and making marks, I could see some of those in the, you know, the Darling Prize. If they, you know, all they need to do is just keep working on it at home and keep refining it. But there's so much potential that I was seeing. And it wasn't necessarily because they had these amazing hyper real works, but there was just character in what they were making. And I think that's really important. You know, we're not all trying to be the same painter.
- [Gill] Those of you who have a front facing camera, I can see Tamara's got her camera around so we can see what she's working on. It's coming along really nicely. If anyone would like to share what they create in the workshop today, please do. If you feel comfortable, share it on Facebook on the event. Otherwise, if you'd like to email any of the creations that you've done through to us, info@mpg.gov.au we always really loved to see the creative spirit that comes out of these workshops really gives particularly the people in our access and learning team who work so hard behind the scenes to pull these workshops together really gives us a big lift. We send all the drawings around on Monday morning and everybody has a really great time looking at them. We'll get Robert might, and Georgina might drop that email address into the link in case people are too shy to share on social media. Thank you. Is Aha Deborah, and they're weird. The harder you look at them, the stranger they get.
- Ears. Yeah they're I think they're the one thing that I just, I try and not to paint them if I can get them tucked behind hair. But I do find that if I just, I think I just find them boring because same with forehead. There's not really any expression in ears. It's not like a, you know, eyes or a mouth. There's not really anything going on. They just kind of sat there on the side of their face. Even hands like hands are so much more interesting than ears. So I just have to force myself to just get through an ear painting day and it's worth it, but it's not definitely not my favourite part of a face to paint.
- [Gill] Evelyn was asking if you were going to mention anything about cool half tones.
- [Melissa] Cool half tones. I'm not quite sure if I'm familiar with that.
- [Gill] Me neither.
- Is that like a, a kind of a mix between a cool and a warm, I often find I learned so much in these workshops as well.
- [Gill] Oh, coming together nicely.
- Oh, cool. Yeah, it's so good to see what everyone's doing. When it comes to painting a portrait and one of the reasons why I like to do this three quarter view is to get the angle of the, the jawline in, I think that's really important. It's one of those angles in a face that if you can have a really nice clean edge to the jawline, not only does it look really interesting and dynamic, but it can fix, like, for example, if everything else in the face is maybe a little bit imprecise or if something else in the face is slightly off, if you can fix the angle of the draw line, it can totally transform and alter your painting for the better. So oftentimes if I'm working with a student and what they're not happy with how something is looking. If we adjust the draw line, that's immediately transforms their work. So if you are feeling like the work is maybe, you know, maybe there's a part of the face, it's just not feeling right. It's not feeling very structured. It's kind of losing its angle, have a look at your jawline and see if that needs adjusting at all. And it same with the edge of the face. So if you've got the jawline on the left and then the edge of the face on the right, try and keep that nice and clean that edge. And if it's starting to maybe become a bit muddied, you can, don't be afraid to go into the background. So if I have time, I might go into my background and start putting in some shadow. So some dark shadow in behind there. And not only is that going to make the shadows in the face start to make sense more, but it will also help me to clean up any edges.
- [Gill] We had a question about doing skin under the hairline or under the hair as well.
- [Melissa] Under the hair, like.
- [Gill] Or how you paint skin under hair.
- [Melissa] I usually approach hair towards the end and I don't paint skin. And then add hair on top. I kind of treat the hair as a big shape of whatever colour their hair is. So if they've got brown hair, I would paint it brown, I think more important and probably a little bit more difficult is the space between the skin and the hairline. So that's actually something that I need to work on next week on my chief justice portrait is I've gone back into the face and done my layer of glaze, which is where all the details really starting to come through. And I've added in this, the I've added in the hair, but there's a bit of a, kind of a harsh line or edge between where the hair starts and his forehead starts. So the way that I'll tackle that is by finding a mid tone. It's usually a bit of a grey. So like that last row that we mixed up, which is that grey purplely blue. And I kind of just glaze between the hairline and the hair to add a bit of a shadow and make it feel like it's moving upwards out of the head, as opposed to this, these two, like wearing a wig or something. It's actually sitting in the head.
- [Gill] Jillian is wondering if you always change brushes for different hues or just for size and shape.
- [Melissa] What actually I've pretty much been using the same brush this whole time. Because I'm working mostly in the same space, I'm not jumping from dark to light constantly. I'm finding that I'm just wiping my brush and physically removing the painters enough. Towards the end of the painting though if I'm starting to, I've pretty much covered the canvas and I'm starting to work on detail a little bit more, and I'm going between light and dark. I might need to use multiple brushes, but for now I'm pretty much just, I found a brush that I like and I'm working with that.
- [Gill] Another brush question. As you get up to the fat layers, do you like to use a dry and clean fluffy brush to blend the sections? Or do you prefer to add more paint between sections?
- [Melissa] I prefer to add paint. So I'll find a mid tone between sections and I'll just place the paint. And then depending on how wet the paint is or how easy it is to move, it might, it usually just kind of naturally starts to blend together, but I might work it a little bit to blend it.
- [Gill] Speaking of hard things to paint. Mary Lou has asked how to paint a row of lovely white teeth.
- [Melissa] My best advice is don't, Not just because I think they never seem to look good, no matter how good you are at painting. I just generally think that smiles in a painting with big teeth. If you look through historically through portraits, you rarely ever see, especially I do you know, of any works in the National Portrait Galleries collection where they've got big smiling row of teeth.
- [Gill] I've got a feeling that we, that perhaps one of our previous directors wrote a book about the smile in a portrait, but I think it's so rare an event.
- [Melissa] Yeah.
- [Gill] We're all looking at each other with furrowed brows, trying to think of someone with a smile, a painted smile. I think there might be some photographs of people smiling.
- [Melissa] Yeah.
- [Gill] Potentially, but I'm struggling to think of a painted smirk.
- [Melissa] Not sure, But I think the fact that, yeah that there's photographs, it goes to show the difference in the medium. So photograph is totally different to a portrait. A painted portrait because you know that they're capturing, you're capturing a split moment in time with a photograph. So the moment that someone smiles, whereas with a portrait it's. I mean, at the same time you are capturing a moment in a portrait, and it could translate really well to have a smile, depending on lots of other different elements to what kind of a painting you're going for. But for the work that I like to do, I like it to be a little bit more pensive. So someone can still be happy and joyful in the image, but it's more of a quiet contemplation and that maybe they're also not looking at the camera or that they're looking out of the camera. So I've done pictures where people are smiling, but it's yeah, not that big, cheesy grin that you see.
- [Gill] I think we've come up with one. I think Eddie Mabo has a smile in his painted portrait. We might be able to drop that in the link too.
- [Melissa] Oh yeah.
- [Gill] So Gordon Bennett. I might get our web developer onto that on Monday. He can pull together a list of all the smiles and the collection painted smiles. That's a challenge for you, Abby. She's got a smile in hers.
- But although in saying that to actually give some advice, because I have done pictures with portraits before, with portraits, with teeth before. Same with when it comes to irises, they're never as white as you think are. So teeth, aren't going to be pure white. It's not that people have yellow teeth, but they're more likely going to be slightly yellow or grey. So as well, try not to over define it. So not individual teeth, but more of like a shape. So it might be that you've got like the impression of teeth through a bit of a, a shape that is in reasonably the right colour. I would get that in first and then go back and maybe define maybe just the front four of four teeth and work there as opposed to, you know, trying to get perfect definition of teeth. That's when it's gonna look scary, like a big clown grin. So just walking through what I'm doing right now, I've pretty much covered both sides of the face, the shadows and the highlights. Now I'm going into the nose. And then I'll tackle the eyes and the lips. But this is kind of opposite to where my initial instincts would've been maybe five, 10 years ago. I would've wanted to go straight into the eyes 'cause I was excited about detail. Nowadays I just wanna get the painting going as quickly as I can. And also 'cause I just worked out that a better method was rather than getting caught up in the details because then you know, the eye might look far too big and detailed than what it actually is. It's better to give something for those, those features to hold onto. So a common thing that I see with students is that they might make a nose that is far too big or lips that are far too big or that are slightly off in their or their placement. And instead of well, the way that a student might approach it, that we try and work through is they might continually try and work back into the nose for example, to try and get the shape back to where it needs to be. And actually because they've spent so much time on the nose, the nose itself is looking great. The problem is that it's everything surrounding the nose that has lost shape. So then what we do is we look at, for example, the space between the bottom of the nose and the lips and the space surrounding the nostrils or the surrounding the cheeks. And then by spending some time on there and it often doesn't take much to adjust. It brings all of the structure back to the nose. So if something is starting to look a little bit off, also look at the surrounding parts of that feature and think, is there something there that you can adjust? Because there probably is. So the one time I am actually gonna change my brush now is to do the pupils. Not the pupils, the nostrils. And when you're working on details like nostrils, it's good to have it to be quite lean or at least quite a lot of medium. At least I find not always sometimes you also want a opacity but more just if you you're struggling to get the paint to flow, to move into those little details and crevices, How are we going for time?
- [Gill] We really only have about eight minutes left.
- [Melissa] Okay, I'll see if I can get.
- [Gill] Eight or nine minutes.
- [Melissa] Lips on and eyes done in eight minutes.
- [Gill] Kelly's rethought her entire approach to painting. She normally goes from dark to light. So she's, having an existential dilemma. We love causing people existential dilemmas here at the Portrait Gallery, but also people out of their comfort zone a little bit.
- [Melissa] Yeah. And also my way of painting isn't the right way or the only way, you know, it doesn't mean that you can't go light, dark to light.
- Oh I think people are thoroughly enjoying this session, Mel.
- [Melissa] Yeah.
- [Gill] We might give everybody five more minutes work. And then what we might do is bring Mel out in from her desk to have a look at all of the work. If you feel comfortable, we can share on the big screen, you can show her what you've been working through, but let's do that in another five minutes or so.
- Oops.
- [Gill] Under normal circumstances, we might have run over a little bit with this workshop and given you a few extra minutes of Mel's time, but unfortunately we've popped her on a plane at 5:00 PM. Australian Eastern standard time. So she will be, as soon as four o'clock comes, she'll be racing. So, but we will have never fear. We will have the recording up on our website within a few days and you can also jump onto Facebook live if you can't wait that long and check out the live stream recording, which will be up there as well. All right, Mel.
- [Melissa] Okay.
- [Gill] If we're gonna get you on this plane. We might have to pause there.
- [Melissa] Yes.
- [Gill] We might bring you out from behind the desk and just bring you up here if that's okay. And then we can get everybody who would like to, to hold their works up to the camera. If you would like you've got.
- [Melissa] Oh wow.
- [Gill Oh look.
- [Melissa] Oh, that's awesome.
- Oh, that's fantastic. Hector, would you mind just moving the mouse on the screen so we can see some of the names. Thank you so much, everyone.
- Yeah, thank you so much.
- Look at that, that's fantastic. Oh my gosh all these different techniques. Wow. Oh Alex, that's gorgeous.
- Oh that's awesome
- Wow.
- Oh fantastic Carol.
- And you've all done so much in an hour as well. Just over an hour of painting.
- Carol and Karen look like they've been painting the same person maybe that's a relative. This is brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing this with us, everybody. It really, really fuels our souls here at the Portrait Gallery. Being able to see so many people being so creative for an afternoon. Isn't that great?
- Yeah fantastic. Thank you so much, everybody. Thanks for sharing everything and.
- And if you'd like to pass on any compliments or any extra questions for Mel in the chat, we'll make sure that she gets all of that as soon as she manages to get safely back to Perth. Thank you everyone.
- Thank you.
- Brilliant. Thank you so much, Mel.
- Thank you.
- For all your time and for taking us through that, your patience.
- Yeah, no thank you for having me
- I've already managed to absorb all of the compliments on your behalf, but we'll send them through to you because everybody has been very forthcoming in their praise of softening side.
- Oh, thank you so much.
- Thank you, I know it's a very weird experience to have to kind of do it in isolation from people actually in the space. But I can tell you there's been 100s of people out there who've really thoroughly enjoyed it this afternoon so.
- Yeah, oh I have too, it's been fantastic. Thank you so much everybody. And thank you to the National Portrait Gallery for this amazing opportunity and yeah.
- No problems at all, thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you everybody. We'll let Mel run to go and get onto her plane, but if anyone would like some more information about the workshops that are forthcoming, we have one on the 8th of October with Caroline Zilinsky, who is another Darling Portrait Prize finalist. So please tune in for that one as well. Otherwise, jump on our website, portrait.gov.au check out everything that we've got going on, both virtually and on site. And I hope to see you all again online very soon. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.
- Thank you.
- Bye.
- Thanks.
- Thank you.
