Your Summer Portrait Adventure

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There's a particular magic to summer light on a child’s face.

Meet Tillie and Lulu, two sisters I painted as family heirlooms in the full flush of summer greens. The garden behind them, the warmth on their skin, the quiet strength in how they hold your gaze. I wasn't trying to capture every detail. Just the wonder of childhood, suggested with color and light and a few well-placed marks to convey the likeness.

Portraits of Tillie and Lulu, Private Collection, 24x18” pastels

That's the heart of portrait work. Let’s face it, likeness matters, and capturing it is what we're after. 

The freedom comes in learning to convey that likeness with a few well-placed contours and foundational shapes, so the work can breathe with loose, airy life. You can hold the likeness and the spirit at once. 

The uniqueness of a child, and the sense of wonder, in the same few marks.

Summer is a generous season for study. The people you love are close, the light is abundant, and there's time to slow down and really look. A portrait made now becomes the kind of thing a family keeps for generations.

Would you love to create a portrait of someone in your life this summer?

The Painterly Portrait self-study course walks you through the whole journey: the confidence to begin, the technique to see and describe what's in front of you, and a clear step-by-step process from first marks to finished piece. You can move at your own pace, anytime. 

Why not make it your summer adventure? 

START YOUR SUMMER PORTRAIT ADVENTURE

3 Keys to Painting Aging Faces with Dignity

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There is a profound nobility in the weathered faces of our elders, each line and contour telling stories of decades fully lived. Their expressions carry the weight of experience, the quiet confidence of wisdom gained, and the subtle dignity that comes with advancing years. As artists we have a unique opportunity to capture these qualities through the sensitivity of our medium, creating portraits that honor both the strength and vulnerability present in our seasoned subjects.

I’d love to walk you through three essential keys to capturing their character with authenticity along the way.

Alain Picard, The Fisherman, 18x12” pastel 

1. Master Your Initial Observation

Begin your portrait journey through careful observation and sketching. Document the essential architecture of aging: how surface skin patterns relate to the bone structure beneath, where characteristic wrinkles appear, and how proportions shift with time. Pay particular attention to thinning lips, enlarged noses, and developed ear lobes. Study the depth of eye sockets and how hair patterns change, including areas of thinning and graying. With careful observation you become a student of aging faces.

 
 

2. Build Form Through Light and Shadow

A solid structure is more important than surface details. Start with charcoal or hard pastels, applying thin, controlled initial layers following the fat-over-lean principle. Rather than drawing individual wrinkles, concentrate on how light interacts with the form and surface of the head. Establish your major light and shadow areas first, considering positive and negative shapes. Use the technique of squinting to see broader value patterns clearly. Once confident in your foundational layers, transition to soft pastels, using light, side-stroke applications to build your forms progressively. Let the play of light tell the major story of your subject's features.

3. Suggest Rather Than State

Exercise restraint in depicting age lines – less really is more! Kindness matters at this stage. Use side strokes for broader areas and let your application method create natural texture with soft pastel. Build depth gradually through varying pressure, allowing underlying tones to show through. Pay special attention to areas where blood at the surface of the skin may influence color like around the eyes and use cooler tones in more recessed areas like the jaw or in the hair. If your character is rugged like the weathered fisherman, then hatching with choppy marks is a great way to suggest this quality. Every mark should serve to suggest rather than explicitly state the effects of time.


Remember: Your goal is capturing the essence of the individual, not cataloging their age. Each mark contributes to telling your subject's story with dignity and grace.

Enjoy this rewarding creative experience as you celebrate the aging faces in your life!

Alain

IAPS Portrait Demonstration

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Attending the IAPS Convention in Albuquerque, NM was a creative highlight of the year. I was invited to give a portrait demonstration entitled, "The Painterly Children's Portrait." Our model was 17, so we just  made the cut there! I used an approach to painting this portrait that relies upon massing in the big simple shapes without any detail at the start, then progressing to the refinement of smaller shapes as the work develops. Here you can see the portrait at the first break, where I've washed in a basic skin tone color, and addressed all the major shapes of the painting. I've come to really enjoy using an underpainting with alcohol in my portrait work to keep things loose and simple at the start. 

After about 90 minutes of work, I took a second picture of the portrait in progress. Here you can see that I've worked on anchoring the darks, developing the color relationships in the hair, shirt, and background, and beginning to address the smaller shapes of the facial area. This method of development can be known as, "pulling the portrait out of the fog". 

Here is the final portrait study at the end of our three hour portrait demonstration (about 2.5 hours of painting time). I continued to develop the smaller details of the face, as well as addressing the overall color harmony and accents throughout the portrait. I gave special care not to overdevelop the shadow areas, keeping them simple and quiet. I had great fun building up the skin tone colors in the face and the painterly texture throughout, taking liberty with color. Enjoy!

"Portrait of Kathleen" Pastel on Wallis Museum Grade 18x14" Collection of John Philbin Dolan

My NuPastel Portrait Palette Colors

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Artists often ask me which brand of hard pastels I use, as well as what specific colors are in my portrait palette. Well, to answer this question once and for all, I've created a chart of my favorite NuPastel portrait colors, along with a collection of grays that I keep in my portrait palette. I purchase these NuPastels in single sticks online from resellers like Jerry's Artarama. All the numbers on this chart correspond with the official NuPastel color chart numbers, so you can easily order them yourself. If you want to learn how to sharpen these to a point, watch my video where I given a demonstration. I hope you find this helpful!

6 Basic Skin Types

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While there is a vast array of beautiful people throughout the world and a multitude of ethnic backgrounds, I find it helpful to group them into 6 basic skin types in order to approach the process of painting skin tones in a pastel portrait. Here is a chart I've created representing the 6 basic skin types; pale, fair, medium, olive, naturally brown, and very dark brown/black. My portrait palette box is organized to represent all of these skin types so that I'm always prepared for any skin type I may encounter. Samples of each skin type are represented below. 

If you're passionate about honing your skills in drawing realistic and expressive skin tones, we invite you to join our Painterly Portraits Course. In this comprehensive course, we delve deeply into the art of capturing various hair, skin tones, and facial features with pastels to give your portraits the best photo-realistic look.

Skin Tone Chart