Pixiq

Portrait paintings have a huge variety of styles, from classical to Pop Art to Impressionist, plus many more. The more classical portrait paintings involve a tremendous amount of detail, which you can learn about more fully in my book, The Art of Digital Photo Painting. In this article, we’ll jump right into painting portraits in a variety of techniques that are fast and easy; these can be combined with more details to take them to the next level.

Traditional Portrait Painting

The first consideration in a portrait painting is to decide on the style desired. Learning to paint traditional portrait first is stepping stone to variety of portrait painting techniques, so we’ll start there.

Go to File > Open and choose a portrait. For this example, I've selected a teenage girl.  

Open the Auto-Painting palette by selecting Window > Autopainting.

Click the Quick Clone button, found in the bottom of the Underpainting palette. A new duplicate image will now appear, covered by the tracing paper.

Click the Smart Stroke Painting and Smart Settings buttons in the Underpainting palette.

Choose the brush: ARTIST OILS / BLENDER BRISTLE. SIZE: 40 OPACITY: 50% RESAT: 0%

Be sure the Rubber Stamp is clicked in the Colors palette so Clone Painting is selected. Hide the image so the screen is white by clicking the ToggleTracing Paper icon.

Click the Play button at the bottom of the Auto-Painting palette to start. Let the Auto-Painting play until it’s finished.

Select the Brush and start to hand paint on the girl’s skin and hair to smooth it. Follow the lines of her facial features and the lines of her hair with long, smooth strokes. Be sure to zoom in to be able to see your work.

The Blender Bristle brush responds well to being made smaller for details and larger for hair. Lift the brush often off the canvas to create lots of brushstrokes.

Turn off the Rubber Stamp in the Color palette so you can use the Dropper tool to pick up some color from the image. Use the Dropper to select color from the face, then adjust the colors in the Color palette so they are slightly different than the ones already on the canvas. Continue painting the skin. Adding additional colors will add depth to the painting.

Now use the Dropper to select colors from the eyes; tweak the colors slightly in the Color palette. With the brush, add these colors to the eyes. Adjust the brush size for these smaller areas, and lift the brush often so it will refill with paint each time.

Don’t feel the need to paint over the entire canvas. Just do enough to smooth things out. Less detail means the image looks less like a photograph and more like painting.

Select the Burn tool, which is stacked under the Dodge tool in the Toolbox.

Use these settings: Size: 50;  Opacity: 3%;  Jitter: 0%

Use the Burn tool to make s

hadow areas under her chin, in her hair, and on the background darker. In particular, her hair needs burning to bring back texture.

At this point, the painting should be ready for the finishing touch, which will tone down the brushwork and enhance the colors. The Equalize effect will do all of that at once.

Go to Effects > Tonal Control > Equalize.

The Equalize palette will appear. Accept the default setting by pressing OK.

It’s clear to see that the Auto-Painting feature in Painter is an easy and efficient way to begin painting, but the hand brushstroke is still an important artistic touch necessary to create work that does not look totally Auto-Painted.