Paintings Stept By Step

From "Portrait Painting for Beginners".
  The composition has been "set" by two lines of action. The first (1) locates the side of face and neck. The second (2) crosses the first to give position of shoulders. A third (3) establishes the oval of the face, and a fourth (4) bounds the neck and shoulders at model's left. A fifth (5) defines her right shoulder.

  The inside and outside hairlines are next located, as is the gown on the shoulders.

  Artists differ in their feeling toward the eye. Many— perhaps a majority—speak of it as the most expressive of all the features. Some, however, point out that although the eyeball itself has a quality of mobility and animation which the painter should strive to catch, the individual­ity and expressiveness of the eye come less from the eye­ball—for eyeballs look much alike—than from the flexi­ble muscles of the forehead and eyebrows, the type and position of the lid, and the surrounding network of wrin­kles, in particular those at the outer eye corner and across the bridge of the nose. But don't overdo these de­tails—one can paint a perfect likeness with the eyes al­most lost in the general tone of the eye socket.

  It is the mouth which is the truly sensitive thing. It is seldom twice alike, for under normal conditions it records instantly every change of inward thought or feel­ing. There are times when the shifting of the lines of the mouth by scarcely more than a hairbreadth will alter one's entire appearance. Therefore, the painter must ob­serve his sitter's mouth keenly, recording with fidelity what he thinks to be its most significant expression.

  But it is pointless to write much of such features. The main thing is to paint them all with restraint, remember­ing that they are but parts of a whole. Yet they are not separate parts, each complete in itself, but they form, to­gether with the cheeks, the chin—the whole head, in fact —a homogeneous mass which must be painted as a unit. Only in this way can all the features be of consistent shape, size, light and shade and coloring.