The rise of an artist : Gerry Bryceland
The ascent of a portrait painter : Gerry Bryceland? Drawing with charcoal is definitely much messier than graphite, and after working on a drawing for some time, you’ll probably have black palms and fingerprints. This isn’t a bad thing. It just means that if you are planning to draw with charcoal, you need to be prepared to clean up afterward. When drawing with charcoal, you have more range with what direction you want to take your self-portrait in. You can draw on a smooth surface, and if you are careful, you can create a beautiful picture with a full range of soft tones. Or you can draw on a rough surface and create a rougher portrait. One of the more advanced techniques that you can try with charcoal is adding water to the mix. Adding water to charcoal will allow you to create washes of greys, as well as intense blacks. If you want to try adding water to your charcoal drawing, make sure that you use a heavier watercolor paper.
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 guides on portret painting: The tones, colors and textures of the skin are all built up in thin layered glazes of paint applied over the flesh toned underpainting. Transparent glazes of burnt sienna (occasionally darkened with Prussian blue) and naphthol crimson are used for the darker tones and colors, while more opaque glazes of titanium white are used to create the highlights on the skin. The dark tones are applied with a burnt sienna glaze over the flesh colored underpainting. A variety of small brushstrokes, stippling and smudging is used to render the softly blended tones of the face.
Self-Portrait Drawing Tips: Don’t obsess over creating a perfect likeness of yourself. As an artist, you should be working to express yourself, and that expression includes drawing what you feel as much as what you see. If you want a perfect copy of your face, you can take a picture for that. If you want an intriguing and thought-provoking self-portrait, then worry more about the mood of the piece rather than trying to create a photo-realistic drawing. Color can be your friend. Whoever said that a self-portrait has to be black and white? You could draw your self-portrait in graphite or charcoal, or you could be more adventurous and try colored pencils, pastels, or oil pastels. Or, you could really step your game up and try painting a self-portrait with watercolors, gouache, acrylics, or oils.
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.