(groovy music)
-: Hey, my name is Janet Fagan,
and we are going to explore the portrait today
using warm and cool colors.
So, you'll see on the table here, I have some piles.
What I have done is I've taken magazines
that folks were no longer interested in,
no one in my house was reading them any longer,
and I've cut them up.
So I have a pile of warm colors,
yellows, reds, oranges,
and I have a pile of cool colors,
greens and blues and purples.
I've also made a pile of darks.
So, some blues, some browns, deep greens,
some deep shadow colors.
And we're going to use use these to build our portraits.
I'm gonna use myself as a model,
which is a really easy thing to do.
So I would encourage you to do
as many self portraits as possible
because it's a great way to learn about the face,
lights and darks, and color.
So I'm sitting here in front of a mirror.
You can too, if you have a bathroom mirror
you wanna sit in front of
or if you have a hand mirror like this one
that you can prop up maybe on a pile of books,
even a makeup mirror will work.
The trick is though, you wanna prop it up on something
so that you don't have to continually hold it
if you want it to stay in a stable spot.
So, duct tape,
using a scarf to tie it to something might work.
The other tools that I have here,
we're gonna want a light on ourselves.
I have an example here of a clamp light
that I use every once in a while.
This is kind of handy, you can put it on to any structure
that's around you.
But you can also use a lamp,
if you have a bedside lamp that you can sit beside
or if you have a clamp light
that you might use as a spotlight while working in a garage,
something like that would work too.
Even a flashlight
if you can strap a flashlight onto something.
As far as paper goes,
you can work on just regular 8 1/2 by 11 copy paper
if you like, if you have that handy.
This is sketchbook paper, nine by 12 sketchbook paper,
just drawing paper.
Really, anything will work; file folders,
paper bags (laughs), anything that's handy.
So the way we're gonna get started is just
with some observation.
So, I'm gonna look at myself here in the mirror.
And, one of my favorite views
when I'm thinking about drawing myself is
to put myself at a little bit of a,
what I call a three quarter angle.
So, this for example, is head-on.
The centerline of my face goes right up and down the middle.
But if I turn my head just a little bit,
this is a three quarter angle.
So now, when I look in the mirror,
I can see mostly this side of my face,
but the other side of my face is peeking around
from the back, which is kind of cool, I like that.
And from this angle, I'm seeing that most of the light
is hitting this side of my face.
If I turn this way, then the reverse is true.
So, I'm going to actually use this vantage point.
And I'm gonna start by
looking at just the whole shape of my head,
which I'm gonna represent with a big oval on my paper.
So my goal is, I just wanna have a loose guideline
to start collaging or building the form of my face
using warm and cool colors.
So, that's the first thing I'm gonna do.
I'm just gonna sketch that out.
So a big oval for my head, a cylinder for my neck,
a rough line for where my shoulders are,
and then, the neat thing about the three quarter view
is that the centerline for your face
is not down the center,
but it's off to the side just a little bit.
So I'm gonna sketch the centerline
and just to orient my features,
I'm gonna make a little bit of a proportion map here
just to get me started.
So, center of my face,
and then a horizontal center where my eyes are gonna fall,
the halfway down to my chin, another mark,
another horizontal mark where my nose is going to fall,
and then finally, one more halfway mark
about where my mouth will be.
And then I'm gonna look at the outer envelope
or the silhouette,
and capture just the general shape of my hair.
Because remember, I'm not concerned with any detail
at this point.
I'm just giving myself a guideline
for where I'm gonna drop in the color that I see.
I'm looking now at this line here,
just to give myself a little landmark
for where the edge of my face is before I get started.
Okay.
So, proportion map,
general silhouette of the outline of my head,
and the next thing I'm gonna look for are
the large patterns of light and dark.
Because what we know about color is that cool colors,
the greens, the blues, the purples,
those go back in space, those recede, like shadows.
So, what we'll do in just a moment is
we're gonna define all of the shadow areas
that we see with those cool colors.
The warm colors,
we know that warm colors naturally come forward,
so when we're talking about form, we can build form
by putting the warmer colors in the lighter areas.
So, all of these spaces where light is hitting my face,
I can start to think about putting the warmer colors.
So, to make that easier,
I'm gonna just outline them a little bit here.
I'll also continue
to observe myself in the mirror as I work but,
it's nice just to give myself a good starting point.
So, I know there's light in this triangular area,
there's light on my nose on this side.
I see light down here on my torso.
And there's a nice big shape of light on my hair over here.
And I'm also noticing that the darks,
the darkest darks that I see, are along the side of my face.
I see some dark areas,
shadows being cast on my eyes sockets
and on the far side of my face, my chin and my neck.
So, I think I'm in a good place to get going.
So, you'll see on your screen
that I have an example of what this project looks like
after you've put some of your darks in.
You wanna always think about working dark to light.
And the example that you see shows,
after putting in the darks,
this is what your portrait will look like.
So, I'm just gonna demonstrate that here too.
So what you'll notice is that these shapes are pretty random
because when I cut them out of the magazine,
I was just aiming for the colors.
And now I'm gonna refine them just a little bit
so they start to match what I see in the mirror
and what I've sketched out on my paper.
So I'm gonna start with the darkest darks,
which are on this side of my hair in particular,
and I'm gonna try and kind of make them match this line
that I see at the edge of my face.
So I'm just gonna start to tear a little bit.
I might even eyeball it with the scissors.
Let's see how that's looking.
Yeah, that's not bad.
I'm not aiming for perfection here,
I just want to get something going that I can work with,
and then we can refine it as we go on.
Sort of a guideline that I like to use
when I'm making any sort of artwork,
but especially when I'm thinking about getting started,
is general to specific.
So, don't ask yourself for perfection
or a lot of detail at the very beginning,
that's just too stressful.
Keep it nice and loose and general in the beginning,
and then enjoy building
to the place where you feel like you have enough detail.
And this is a great project to explore that.
So, right now I'm just looking
for ways to put in big dark areas without worrying too much
if they're exactly right.
So I'm gonna move over to this side too,
and I see that I kind of have a curve or a C shape.
And I'm gonna rip this one
so that it's just a little bit different,
a little more organic, since it's kind of curly hair.
Yeah, that'll work.
Lemme put that in.
And I'm gonna just sort of look through my pile of darks.
There're some blues in here too just add some variety.
I'm gonna come down.
Always going back to the mirror to compare.
I'm gonna add a little bit of the texture
that I see here at this point.
Cut a little curve in there to sort of mimic a curl.
Okay, so you start to sort of see the idea.
Just gonna continue to build with your darks
until you get to the point
where you feel like you can move on to your middle tones.
So if you wanna see what we're aiming for,
go ahead and take a look at the example
that I've brought in, you'll see it on your screen.
And this shows how the portrait is starting to develop
now that we're moving to our warmer tones, okay?
And I mentioned middle tones.
So, if you go back to the idea of thinking about
observing your face in terms of lights and darks,
not everything is a strong highlight or a deep shadow.
You've got a lot of space in there
that's somewhere in between.
And when you're thinking about color,
those middle tones that make up most of what you see,
you can find a color that will represent that
in the warms that you picked out.
So, for example,
I've got this color in my hand and this color in my hand.
And I'm thinking that for what I see,
if I'm thinking about color when I look at my face,
this will probably be the color that I use the most stuff,
and then this could represent a little bit warmer color
that would be the highest values or the lightest lights.
So that's probably how I'm gonna go forward.
I'm gonna go ahead and use shades like this,
maybe some of this,
and then for my middles, my middle warm tones,
and then when I get up to my highest highlights,
I'm gonna move into the yellows and the whites.
The same with your darks.
You can think about your very deepest,
darkest, darkest darks.
Maybe even going into this pile.
Or, you could look at your purples and your blues
and your darkest darks would be your purples
and then your darks that are not quite as dark
could move into your blues.
So, it's just a way of having fun
with thinking about your lights and darks in terms of color.
So, thinking about your lightest lights
as your very warmest colors
and your darkest darks as your very deepest, coolest colors.
And as you model those into your portrait,
you'll start to come up with something
that looks like this, right?
So this is an example.
After I've worked on this for a while,
this is what I did at home
because you can spend some time on this.
You'll see that the highlights,
I went with the yellow like I'm talking about,
some highlights on my nose, on my nostrils,
and then the strong bright red
for the highlights on my hair.
In the shadows, I've got almost like a brown black here
for my coolest deepest shadows,
going all the way to greens and blues on this side.
So, this is a project that's really fun to sink into,
put on some music, enjoy exploring your colors,
placing them in different places,
seeing how they look, trying different things.
You might even try just to cut out three different shades
or values of one color.
So maybe you could do the whole thing in green.
Dark green, light green and pale green.
There's a lot of possibilities here.
Experiment too with turning your head,
you know, do a head-on, do three quarter views,
maybe even experiment with looking at somebody else
for a straight profile.
The key is just to enjoy exploring and experimenting.
And the more you observe and the more you play,
the more confident you'll become.
So, have fun and when you're outside,
look around at the different colors colors that you see
and think about, when you're looking at a tree for example,
how many shades of green do you see?
What do the shades that are in the light look like
compared to the ones that are in the center of the tree
and they're are darker?
It's amazing what you'll discover.
Have fun with it.
Thank you.
(groovy music)