50 practical tips for painting your first portrait

Painting a first portrait is exciting. You don't just want to create a face with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. You want someone to emerge who is alive, looking, and recognizable. Precisely because of this, a portrait can seem more complicated than a still life or landscape. Every small change in posture, proportion, color, or expression can affect the likeness.

However, a first portrait does not have to be a leap into the unknown. A face consists of the same painterly building blocks as any other subject: large forms, light and dark, warm and cool colors, hard and soft edges. When you examine these elements calmly and in a fixed order, painting becomes more manageable.