Student Success Stories – Acrylic Portrait
Below is a gallery of students’ work that has been inspired by the Naturalistic Skin Tones painting in The Acrylic Portrait Course.
If you’ve completed the painting from the course yourself drop me an email and I’ll add it to the page!
Zeller Pimlott – great observation of the shadow tones on the planes of the face
Rachel Goodships – fabulous expressive brushwork on this portrait
Martin Barge – a real breakthrough piece for Martin, excellent colours and observation of the form whilst also keeping a painterly feel.
Madeline Bower
Sonja Feldt – Love the expression, as if peering down concentrating on the needlecraft in hand. The canvas texture adding some great broken edges to the brushstrokes.
Inge Heynderickx – So many brilliant colours on the surface of the skin, adding movement and energy to the concentrated face.
Morana Kavgic – This has a timeless quality to it, as if from a different era. It’s amazing how the few simple lines on the top tell the story of the dress.
Alberto – This is looking fantastic! The colours are beautiful, a really well balanced tonal piece. The cool grey skin against the vibrant warm glazes is harmonious and shows great sensitivity. Really love the eyelid!
Adana Virna – Adana has really managed to create a great range of colours, great to see all the different varieties within the surface of the skin. Nice painterly handling of the face, great work!
Matt Adler – This first painting with this palette is looking great. Love the texture in the piece and the confident strokes to the grey top, I especially like Matt’s handling of the eyes within the face.
Dr Connie Hurley -This is looking brilliant! Connie has got the colour mixes for the skin tones spot on, love how the brighter dashes of red bring life to the skin tone mixes.
Janet Nietvelt – Great work on the form of this portrait, you really get that feeling of the greys and then the warmer skin tones working together really well.
Tatiana – This drawing looks great, with well-observed details in the clothing and the subtle tonal values throughout the portrait.
Ruth – The form and features of the face feel really three-dimensional. The more saturated blush of pink on the lips brings the piece to life and it has that great melancholy feel and sense of space. Great work Ruth!
Orla Mikkelsen – Fabulous job on this portrait, Orla has handled it really well. You can really feel the sense of concentration of the gaze.
Michael Scotland – This first portrait has a really lovely muted pink tone to it. The form and features of the face are great and Micheal’s handled the more saturated blush of pink on the lips brilliantly bringing the piece to life.
Mary – Love the confident blocks in the dress, sit so well against the other colours
Marjan van der Donk – Marjan has got a lovely touch with colour sense, this portrait, in particular, is purposely quite grey and muted but it’s been handled brilliantly with a real energy to the marks.
Marijke Bentley – Skin tones are looking great, and a nice fall of light from the top of the portrait down to that area that is more in shadow, the extra brighter colour on the lips helps to distinguish them from the rest of the face, fab job!
Linda Gillen – Congratulations Linda! Great work on her first-ever acrylic portrait! The colours are well balanced with lovely variety in the shadows.
Lance Carlson – This is looking fab! Lance has really managed to capture the lovely cooler skin tones of this portrait.
Justin Johnson – This a great palette for stretching what can be achieved with such a few colours and this portrait has a really lovely muted pink tone to it, great texture and brushstrokes while still maintaining subtle variations, fantastic work!
Jim Neuner – Jim’s really captured that feeling of the soft tones and greys and then the warmer skin tones, it works together really well.
Huguette – Lovely skin tones and the subtle layers of muted greys work brilliantly ‘under the skin’
Heather – Heather’s painting is looking great. Love the cool purples and then the confidence in the paint application, just great!
Hans Gustafsson – It’s hard to believe Hans has never tried to paint portraits before as this is a really fantastic painting. Colour mixing is looking so full of life! Really well-judged.
Gloria Wheeler – The glazes over the grey underpainting have worked great on this portrait. There’s a real temptation to go stronger with the intensity of the pigments but Gloria has resisted the urge! and its paid dividends in the final result.
Fiona Bisset – There is a real character of the sitter coming through in this painting, with a clear observation of the light and dark values which help to bring the form to life.
Cheryl – Really nice subtle rendering between the lips and the skin tone, this first painting is a challenge as it forces you to mix colours that are more muted and grey than you might usually go for, great job Cheryl!
Brenda – Nice structure throughout the portrait and I can see Brenda has carefully observed the different changes of light on the surface, great job!
Ben East – A fantastic textural style, Ben found the Zorn palette has been helpful in achieving that more muted colour range, and Ben’s Emily Zorn portrait is particularly lovely. Great subtle greys and muted tones and has achieved a really lovely natural impressionistic brush handling.
Barbara Boettcher – This is unbelievably Barbara’s first portrait ever. Congratulations, it looks brilliant! All of the skin tones are working so well, what a fab start!
Aya – The softness of Aya’s brush handling has worked great, it shows a real sensitivity for painting subtle portraits. Fab colour mixing too with great use of glazing for the smooth transition between the light and dark!
You might also like:
You can learn more about the Acrylic Portrait Course here