Tim Rees: The Portrait Sketch

In The Portrait Sketch, you’ll see it all:

• Why Tim is passionate about the initial sketch and how that will set the tone for your entire experience with a painting
• Tim’s proven method for breaking down a project into sections, allowing you to laser focus your learning and practice so you (and others) will see steady progress in your work
• How to capture your initial excitement about the subject so your paintings have a more fluid and spontaneous feel — vibrant and lifelike!

“A portrait sketch is almost like a sport — your one shot at getting your heart really pounding so you can go for it!”

— Tim Rees

Real Style That’s All Your Own

If you enjoy the looser portrait styles of John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, and Joaquin Sorolla, you’ll love what Tim shows you here.

If you’re an artist who desires to create realistic portraits, and you also want to develop and showcase your own personal style, you won’t want to miss a moment of this!

You’ll find Tim’s teaching style to be casual, very informative, and easy to follow as he instructs and demonstrates each step of his painting process, breaking it all down into logical steps. 

You’ll quickly see that consistent progress is not about how much time you paint, it’s about defining reasonable goals, laying out the plan, and sticking with it!

Even if life doesn’t allow you to paint regularly, having a plan will help you pick right up where you left off — no more trying to figure out where you were the last time you painted!

Paint Better … Paint Faster … Have More Fun!

Study with Tim and you’ll find yourself painting more portraits and getting them done much more quickly than you might be now — a true benefit of working alla prima (wet-on-wet).

Even though you’ll be painting faster, you’ll be painting with more accuracy — thanks to following along with Tim’s tried-and-true techniques.

You’ll be capturing a fresh, honest portrayal of your model by painting what is there and by clearly copying nature.

Best of all … you’ll have more fun and find deeper satisfaction in your own portraits because your personal voice and style will begin to emerge with each new painting —what every artist is looking for!

With these new skills and faster processes, you’ll be:

• Posing your model quickly to best achieve an immediate dynamic likeness — this is where the excitement really begins!
• Applying paint to allow layers and a variety of features to show throughout the portrait … capturing important details (but without sweating the small stuff!)
• Mixing colors for flesh tones… Learn from Tim and you’ll overcome this troublesome hurdle that many artists struggle with for years!
• Using traditional measuring techniques to improve accuracy — this alone will reduce your stress and frustration by a ton!
• Integrating the subject into a loose or abstract background to make more than a study — you’ll actually be creating a work of art!

Here are just some of the techniques Tim will teach in this video:

• An Ebuache block-in — push color around to create a blurry version of your model
• Wet-into-wet paint layering — the alla prima techniques that allow you to create layers and paint more quickly
• Transparent painting — watch Tim add blobs of transparent color, and, just when you think there’s no way this is going to work, the form magically begins to appear!
• Measuring with sight-size (if possible), triangulation, comparative, and plumbs/levels — don’t let any of this scare you because Tim shows you everything you need!
• Loose painting with visible brushwork — you won’t believe the easy detail you can add by using a brush with staggered hairs!
• How to paint color between colors instead of blending —never fear muddy colors again because you’ll actually move or replace color rather than blend!
• The key to juicy paintings —you must know this if you want to get the model’s features correct!

All of these techniques will help improve your portrait work, and everything else you love to paint!

DEMO CHAPTER OUTLINE:  

• Introduction
• Setup the Canvas & the Model
• The Ébauche Block In
• Paint the Mouth
• Move Up the Face
• Move Up Into the Eyes
• Work on Final Accent Marks & Hair
• Finish the Painting