Art Answers: Portrait Painting

Tricia Reichert, formerly a nationally accredited high school teacher in Britain, came to the US with her husband in 1978. For the past 25 years, Tricia has studied and practiced drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking. She specialises in the art of portraiture, of animals and people, and her other areas of expertise and interest include many forms of printmaking and figurative sculpture. She now works as a professional portrait painter and art teacher. Pastel is her medium of choice for portraits but she also works in many different mediums including, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, oil, printmaking, (etchings, woodcuts, linocuts, solar prints), and figurative clay sculpture.

July 13This is essentially a hints-and-tips guide with the topics headed by questions. Subjects include How can I decide where to place the figure?, How can I choose a palette of colour to start with? and What are the steps for making a quick sketch in pencil? I've picked those pretty much at random, but think of a question yourself and the chances are it'll be one of the two hundred answered here, either from a technical or a creative standpoint. What I like about this is that, although there is an overall structure – chapters on Backgrounds and Composition, Skin Tones, Facial Features, Hair, Clothing and so on – the book doesn't feel like a course. For me, it's something to dip into and pull out a plum. There's an index if you need something specific, I've said before that I'm a fan of serendipity and I like the idea of picking this up with a cup of tea and just finding something new, pretty much by chance.