Ok.. Last week I attended a portrait workshop at a large Art Supply store in Toronto (I was at the Markham location actually). The artist giving the workshop was William Lazos. You can see some of his work at
www.williamlazos.com His 'day job' so to speak are the full building sized murals you see all over Toronto. However, during the winter when he can't paint, he builds up his gallery showing portfolios. He has shown his art in London, New York, Chicago, Toronto etc. He excels in Hyperphotorealism airbrushing.
Anyways.... over the course of 6 hours, he started with a flesh based canvas and proceeded to paint a photo that he had brought. He first transferred the main lines using a projector and a pencil. Then he used what he considered a mid-value flesh tone (kind of a brown) to build the image. His technique relies on what he calls the one and only rule of portraits.. light advances and shadows recede. Meaning you start with a mid value to build the image, and then you add multiple thin layers of light colours and white to bring out the highlights and multiple thin layers of darker browns/blues to deepen the shadows. What you end up with is a very 3D image that pops off the page. In the interest of speed he used a nylon brush for the sharp edges though in his own artwork he tends to use more airbrush. He painted the whole thing with a Paashe VL using self mixed liquitex acrylics. I'll post a series of photos I took with my phone during the seminar. Sorry for the size of the post... but I thought it might be neat to see.
something new..comments welcomed
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