Painting Luminous Portraits for Artists - An Essential Guide to Painting Facial Features, Fleshtones, Light,

The complete guide to painting the portrait in oils.From Steve Forster, award-winning portrait artist and co-director of the Long Island Academy of Fine Art, Painting Luminous Portraits for Artists presents essential lessons on how to paint a radiant likeness in oils in ten comprehensive chapters, each with skill-building exercises and QR codes to instructional videos: Discover fundamental materials, techniques, and basic anatomy and feature development for creating an underdrawing. Explore color theory and color palette structures. Learn painting techniques, including different shape and lighting approaches. Consider creative strategies for portraits. See how digital painting techniques can be used to support and enhance traditional painting techniques. Perfect for artists at all skill levels who want to explore capturing form and light through realistic painting techniques, Painting Luminous Portraits for Artists shows you how to capture the human portrait from a diverse range of perspectives, flesh tones, and light effects.The For Artists series expertly guides and instructs artists at all skill levels who want to develop their classical drawing and painting skills and create realistic and representational art.Also available from the series: Drawing the Head for Artists, Essential Human Anatomy for Artists, Figure Drawing for Artists, Life Drawing for Artists, Drawing and Painting Botanicals for Artists, Dynamic Still Life for Artists, Facial Expressions for Artists, Landscape Painter's Workbook, Plein Air Techniques for Artists, and Sketching Techniques for Artists.

List of contents

CONTENTS
Foreword by Stephen Bauman 
About the Author 
Introduction: Separating Your Drawing Problems from Your Color Problems
Part I: Drawing as a Foundation for Color
1 | Getting Started with Drawing
Drawing Materials
Editing Your Photos
Digitally Altered Photos
2 | Portrait Drawing Concepts: What to Draw
Facial Armature
Measuring and Proportion
The Four Most Important Proportions
Centerline of the Head
Connecting to the Center
Feature Centers
Triangulation Wire Structure: An Invisible Roadmap
Shape Design: An Intuitive Impression 
3 | Portrait Drawing Techniques: How to Draw
Using Graphite and Charcoal Together
Charcoal Technique
Early Stages of Drawing
Ghosting
Demonstration: Drawing for a Painting—Graphite and Charcoal
Part II: Dynamic Flesh Color
4 | Getting Started with Painting
Painting Materials
My Color Choices
Using Color Transparently vs. Opaquely
Ébauche: Transitioning from Drawing to Painting
5 | Visualizing Color Concepts
Munsell Color System 
Hue, Value, and Chroma
Hue as It Relates to Pigments and Warm/Cool
Value as It Relates to Form
Chroma as It Relates to Flesh Tone
Hue as It Relates to Flesh Color Diversity
Amplifying Color Information for Diversity
A Way of Thinking About How to Create Color Diversity on the Palette
6 | Palette Strategies
Creating a Flesh Palette Matrix
Creating a Flesh Color Fiesta
Color Flowers
7 | Alternative Techniques in Painting
Underpainting Technique 
Demonstration: Color Spot Painting
Marbleizing Color
Marbleizing vs. Blending
Blending: The Agony and the Ecstasy 
Demonstration: Alla Prima
Abstract Start
Holding On to Abstract Moments
Brushstroke Variety
8 | Advanced Color Concepts
Classical Flesh Model
Ethnicity and Complexion
Classical Flesh Model with Color Diversity and the Anatomy of Light
Color Interpretation and Aesthetics
9 | Understanding Color and Light
The Compressed Rainbow
Atmospheric Conditions
Compressed Rainbow with a Model
Cool and Warm
Color Planes of the Head
Cinematic Lighting for Mood
10 | The Physical Realities of Paint
Thick Paint Is Powerful
Oiling Out and Glazing In
A Test of Chroma
Competing with a Modern Sense of Color
Value and Chroma in Shadows 
Resources
Acknowledgments 
Index

About the author

Award-winning artist Steve Forster received his MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art (NYAA), and also attended the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, where he met his wife, Rebecca. Since 2014 Steve and Rebecca have been Co-Directors of the Long Island Academy of Fine Art (LIAFA) in Glen Cove, New York. He currently teaches painting at LIAFA and previously taught painting at NYAA for almost 15 years. Steve blends digital painting and a love of traditional media to create unique contemporary portrait stories. His paintings are regularly exhibited in solo and group shows nationally. Steve was born in Boston, spent most of his life in central Florida, and now lives in Glen Cove, New York. Steve and Rebecca have three kids, Elijah, Evie, and William.
steveforster.net
Instagram: @steverforsterpaintings
Long Island Academy of Fine Art: liafa.com
The work of artist and teacher Stephen Bauman focuses on the human figure. He has given drawing and painting workshops and demonstrations at various institutions throughout the United States and Europe, including the Long Island Academy of Art in New York, the Art Florida Academy in Miami, and at all three campuses of the Florence Academy of Art, in Sweden, Italy, and the U.S. Bauman’s work, which has been exhibited and collected in the U.S., Europe, and China, received first place in the Imaginative Realism category of the 2014-2015 Art Renewal Center Salon, as well as a purchase prize for his painting When I Was Young, which was also featured on the cover of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine in which he was profiled. His work has also been featured in numerous other publications, such as Lessons in Classical Drawing and Figure Drawing Atelier by Juliette Aristides. He lives in Florence, Italy.

Product details

• Authors: Steve Forster, Steve/ Bauman Forster, Forster Steve
• Assisted by: Stephen Bauman (Foreword), Bauman Stephen (Foreword)
• Publisher: ROCKPORT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 29.07.2025
• EAN: 9780760395622
• ISBN: 978-0-7603-9562-2
• Series: For Artists
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > General, dictionaries; ART / Subjects & Themes / Portraits, Oils, Art techniques & principles, The Arts: techniques and principles, Portraits in art, Paintings and painting in oils, ART / Techniques / Painting / Oil, Portraits and self-portraiture in the arts