Get to know Gerard Bryceland and some of his portret painting ideas? When you are planning to draw a self-portrait, you must plan out your intentions before you start working. Can art be spontaneous? It can be, and you should embrace this. But when you are trying to create a finished piece of art, you should lay down a framework of what you intend to create, then start working toward that goal. For example, if you are planning to do a simple sketch, then there’s no reason you can’t draw on plain copy paper. But if you are planning on creating a finished self-portrait that you intend to frame, then you need to use a higher quality paper. If you are planning to add watercolor or acrylic or ink to your drawing, you need to use paper that can handle the moisture. If you plan to use oil paint, then you need to draw on paper that has been treated to be used with oil paint. The point here is that planning ahead of time to reach a goal should be your preferred method of working as an artist.

Before starting, here’s a personal tip: Place a mirror in front of you and look closely at your own facial features as you draw your portrait. Why, you ask? Your face is the most familiar face you know, you see it every day of your life and have unknowingly practically memorized all the vital details, so much so that you more or less know if you’re getting the proportions right or not. Now, you’re ready to start! The important thing to keep in mind in this first step is to have a good sense of the space on your paper where you plan on drawing your face, so that you can plot out the optimum placement of your subject that will make for a good composition. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending so much time perfecting your drawing, and then belatedly realizing that you ran out of space.

Gerard Bryceland‘s tricks on portret painting: The hair is the last element of the face to be painted. The painting of the hair is usually the last part of the head to be completed. It follows the natural order of the painting, finally covering the rough edges of both the background and the skin. The colors used for the dark areas of the hair were ivory black and Prussian blue, while the highlights were mostly titanium white. You can see the technique used for painting the hair in our close-up detail. The underpainting was applied with freely brushed glazes of ivory black and Prussian blue. The overpainted details of the hair were built up with fine strokes of black and white whose direction follows the contours of the haircut. The opacity of these brushstrokes was varied to suggest the depth, texture and highlights of the hair. The density of the brushstrokes decreases around the edges of the hair to convey softness of its outline.

Try to start your self-portrait with light, quick sketching lines. This will not only breathe life and create a sense of movement in your drawing, but it will also allow you to lay out a solid foundation before you start to render your drawing in with more details. If you decide that you want to draw a black and white self-portrait, you have your choice of many different materials you could use. Two of the most popular options are graphite and charcoal. Both have their advantages and can be used in similar ways, but they are definitely distinctive materials that will give you a different look for your finished drawing.

About Gerry Bryceland: I’m Gerard Bryceland an artist based in Maidstone Kent and regularly get commissioned to do work doing paintings and portraits of people and their families. I’ve always been an artist from my childhood, I loved drawing my friends and family initially just to mess around with my friends and had a lot of fun drawing them. But as i got older it really just became a business as my friends and their families would want me to do family portraits and that type of thing. With word of mouth word gets out and before you know it you know it I’m 35 and still doing the same thing.