Helping those beginners to have a good grasp of how-to on basic photography and using the dSLR. Albeit, photo portrait painting is also my primary topics in this blog.

Therefore, you will not be able to see any topics sharing too much of in-depth knowledge, but more about fundamental.

You will be able to see below 7 good posts that I wanted to share.

At the same time, I’m also listing them out for my review. Seeking improvement, as well as, wanting to add more interesting and short topics for future photography blogging.

1. Shoot At The Widest Aperture Setting for Basic Portrait Photography
2. Generic Packing List for Outdoor Portrait Photography
3. Simplified ‘Rule of Thirds’ to Photo Portrait
4. 10 Reasons Why Compact Digital Camera is Better Choice For Photo Portrait Painting
5. How to have portrait photography without lighting studio
6. What Makes a Good Portrait Photograph
7. Full Length Portrait in Photography

Pls share your comments or opinions, if you find any of the above-mentioned topics that interest you.

PS: I know… I seriously need to revamp of my current “About Me” page. As time goes by, my aim has become more definitive on purpose for this blog.

Related posts:

1. Shoot At The Widest Aperture Setting for Basic Portrait Photography
2. 5 Basic Skill for Travel Photographers
3. Full Length Portrait in Photography

The 3-hour tour kicked off from the Terrace of the Leper King, which is located at the Northwest corner of the Royal Square of Angkor Thom. It was an adventure of exploring this ancient place dated from late 12^th centuries.

Terrace of the Leper King was built by Jayavarman VII. Sitting on top of the terrace is the statue of The Leper King. Khmer lore indicates that the statue resemble king Jayavarman VII; the Khmer ruler who died of leprosy.

Beside the statue of the Leper King, the amazing terrace wall takes you from the stone carvings of the outer wall perimeter to the inner narrow ‘trench’ of the terrace. Both high defensive walls are covered with bas-reliefs sculptures. Intricate portraits on small figures of Apsara and Devatas, carved by low-technology tools and labor-intensive workers in the early century.

The inner wall is initially built and was filled with earth, before the outer wall was added. Since late 1990s, the French archaeologists has discovered and excavated the inner region. Interestingly, no apparent explanation has been found to unfold the intention for building two separated walls.

Every portraits and figures on the bas-relief has the common smile, similar to the Buddha statues in The Bayon. Limestone slate are perfectly laid on the vertical wall. Bewildered by the aesthetically beauty on every smile of the entire wall.

You will be astounded with awe, upon the entrance to the inner wall. The question is: Has every portrait smile actually appeal to the interest of viewers? Or the mysteriously sculptured figures and their posture that makes the entirety unique? What attribute to a perfect portrait; the smile or the posture?

Below sharing some of the portrait snapshots from Terrace of Leper King. As you can see some figures with raised eye-brow are captured with the smile, yet there do not portrayed with an angered face.

P.S: I have to apologize on the poor quality of the photos from my mobile phone. Partly, due to batteries went flat half way of the tour. Having said that, one advice is to bring additional batteries for your camera; Angkor Thom is part of the area among many temples in Siem Reap.

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1. Buddha Portrait Paintings Of Luang Prabang, Laos
2. Blogging About Basic Photography; 7 Good Posts to Share
3. Photos of Wood Burning Portrait: Art of Pyrographic

“There are only two styles of portrait painting, the serious and the smirk”
~ Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870). An English novelist of the Victorian era.

“A photograph is a portrait painted by the sun”
~ Anonymous (Photography)

“I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.”
~ Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989), A Spanish surrealist painter.

“When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.”
~ Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973). A Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor.

“Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.”
~ Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900). An Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete.

Related posts:

1. 10 Reasons Why Compact Digital Camera is Better Choice For Photo Portrait Painting
2. Portrait Caricature Drawings and Paintings
3. Welcome to Photo Portrait Painting

Be it on train, bus, parks, streets or any public places. People are everywhere to be the subject of their drawings. Ideally, choosing a portrait subject who is sitting or relaxing on a chair, is far better than an action-packed skateboarder dashing to and fro in their playground.

Of every best practices I listed in my previous post, I have given up to fulfill the first 2 practices. Well, I guess it is much of an individual preference. I’m sure portrait drawings for grid system still works for many readers who visited this blog.

Anyway, before I start to dodge from throwing of rotten eggs by anyone, I have to share my excuses for not following what I ‘preached’ last week.

1. I always have 2 sketch books with me. Both having different sizes. Yet not much about drawings. Most of the pages are for my written notes and mind-mapping sketches. I prefer blank paper with free spaces than a notebook with pre-drawn lines. I can do my writings more liberally.
2. I hardly do my drawing from life. When I’m outside for a stroll in the park, I often use my time talking to people and photographing, than to draw them. Nonetheless, I have adopt my best drawing practices with the reference from photograph. That is why I did it again this time, with grid system portrait drawing.

Below showing a small piece drawing of portrait’s eyes from photo. For a portion of the eyes, it has taken me 3 hours to finish.

With a closer look, very light pencil grid lines are still visible at the paler region.  While the rest of grid lines has been blended into the shading. Grid lines help to provide a precised execution on every courses from square-to-square.

I wouldn’t say it is as perfect as the photograph. However, as a hand-drawn artwork, there are more or less some offset. Otherwise, any viewers will be perceiving as a poster print, instead.

Some comments were given from friends, after posted in my Facebook photos.

Photo Portrait, Grid System, Drawing the eyes

“gorgeous !!! … but the eyes seem to look sadder than the original XD ….. “

“… ^_^ … it’s beautiful ! I really wanna draw so many things but i dont have anything feeling in art beautiful!!! “

“i like the drawing than to the original one.i mean the picture. it is bcoz it shows more emotions..it only means that the person draw this wants to express his emotions…hey!!thats my own opinion….peace…”

“hey i dont want to be critical but i love d eyes(in d drawing)!!!!!!! “

“the mystery that is captured beneath that look is astonishing “

P.S.: Subject has remained anonymous in this post.

Related posts:

1. Grid System For Portrait Drawings
2. Why Portrait Drawing Using Grid Lines is The Best Practice?
3. Proportion for Drawing A Typical Adult Head

Drawing is the often describe as the most fundamental, and portrait painting is much more difficult to acquire.

In a concise explanation, I feel that portrait art attribute to a common purpose.. that is, achieving the goal of capturing likeness to the actual person in life.

Cameras can capture likeness easily, but a real portrait painting requires patience and good understanding, and an eye for creativity composition that might come through the brush or pencil.

Since my last post on portrait drawing, I still cannot figure out what is the best practice to accomplish a good portrait art, specifically on paintings and drawings.

Is there any secrets to achieve good portrait painting?

Is techniques or choice of medium contribute to the best learning method?

Or practice makes perfect?

Below sharing some tips for best practices on learning basic portrait drawing and paintings. I do hope there will be useful for every beginners in portrait art.

1. Always keep a small sketch book and start drawing from life subject. This is so simple, isn’t it? Well, I hardly do that when it comes to real practice in public places. I did bring along 2 sketch books in this traveling trip, however, I use it more often as a jotter book than to seriously learn drawings on life subjects.
2. Drawing from life helps to learn how to analyze reality and put it on the page. Its time to change and seriously put in some effort to draw more. Portrait outlines are the basic, the important aspect to describe its form is by determining the light and shade. Analyze and emphasize on light source for shadows and darkness.
3. Do not rush to finish the portrait art, but given ample time for detailed observation. Eventually, what is drawn or painted is translated through your brain. Focus on proportion of drawing a typical adult head. Or perhaps, start drawing basic shape on portrait features, such as nose, ears, mouth. Eyes are very difficult to draw, I hope to have more practice on this area.
4. Learn through trial and errors. “Experience is the best teacher”. Its an old sayings.. “learn from mistakes”, “never too old to learn”, and “learning never ends”. Accuracy is important. Drawing off by the slightest bit just won’t look right. Using grids as an aid helps to minimized errors and more accurate drawings.
5. Drawing is the most fundamental. Capturing the essence of the subject is far more crucial to a powerful and successful portrait than mere details, medium, and techniques. Painting is much more difficult, you have to know what color you are seeing when you’re painting. For drawing portrait, the right shading and proportionality help to determine the value and likeness, respectively. Hue and color in painting comes latter.
6. Study of body anatomy; understand what bones and muscles are behind the skin, how big they are, what their shape is. Do you know even the great master artist, Vincent van Gogh, painted a human skull and skeleton in an anatomy class while he was studying art?

There is no shortcuts for learning portrait drawing or paintings. Will I practice hard on what I have preached?  We shall see next week post..

Related posts:

1. Drawing of Portrait’s Eyes from Photo
2. Why Portrait Drawing Using Grid Lines is The Best Practice?
3. Grid System For Portrait Drawings

Literally, “Luang Prabang”, the city located at the central of Laos’ northern region, is referred as “Royal Buddha Image”. As their city being named, so does their Buddha portrait paintings selling in every art gallery, as well as the famous night market stalls.

One of the portrait paintings I have observed was using pointillism technique, emphasize on groupings of very small dots or dashes of color ‘pointed’ on canvas.

Conceptually, pointillism artwork has some similarity in pixelation of computer graphics in modern days. As opposed to the conventional painting strokes by brushes, dots are ‘pointed’ instead. It is categorized as the Neo-Impressionism painting, evolving in the late 1880s.

Famous paintings for pointillism include Vincent van Gogh, on “Self Portrait, 1887” and the American photorealism artist, Chuck Close, on pixelated portrait painting “Lucas (1986 – 1987)”.

You are able to see below, a collected series of Buddha portrait paintings from Luang Prabang. Two sets using pointillism technique, with slight variant in using only mono color; it uses pen with black color ink. A few closed-up view of the pictures will be able to give you an idea on all this “groupings of very small dots”.

Beside portrait pointillism, their Buddha portrait artwork has also ranged from wood carving and sculpture to acrylic portrait paintings on paper. And include, Buddha portrait drawings on the surfaces of sea shells, turtle shells, round pebbles and stencil paper stamping.

PS: My 3-days bus journey from SaPa to Luang Prabang, was worth traveling, its a long haul though.

Related posts:

1. Famous Quote on Portrait Paintings
2. The Portrait Smile from The Terrace Wall of Leper King
3. Portrait Caricature Drawings and Paintings

Photorealism in the context of describing an art movement, has nothing related to computer graphic rendering.

It is a class of art having the characteristic of making a painting from the use of a photograph. The term, ‘Photorealism’, is primarily applied to paintings from United States art movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Origins

1. In the late 1960s and early 1970s in United States, photorealists were much more influenced by the work of Pop artists and were reacting against Abstract Expressionism.
2. Artists from this genre of paintings use a photograph or several photographs to create their work of art.
3. The invention of photography in the 19^th century had 3 effects on art:-
   • Many portrait and scenic artists acquired the skill of photography as career, because there were deemed inadequate in this discipline.
   • Conceptually, artists between 19^th -20^th century, used the photograph as source material and as an aid. Despite the fact of fearing that their work would be misunderstood as imitations.
   • It created new openings for artists to explore for more creativity through experimentation.
4. Thereafter, photograph has became the main references for photorealists. Reproducing reality and abstraction was the focus of art world.
5. Pop Art and Photorealism were both reactionary movements stemming from the ever increasing and overwhelming abundance of photographic media.
6. It became such a massive phenomenon in mid 20^th century, that it was threatening to lessen the value of imagery in art
7. The difference of art movement for Photorealism and Pop Art:-
   • Photorealism were trying to reclaim and exalt the value of an image. Also sustaining the fact that reproducing paintings from photograph is not mere imitation.
   • Pop Art, usually for commercial usage, were mainly pointing out the absurdity of much of the imagery. Focusing on humor or leisure purposes.

Definitions

1. The word Photorealism was coined by Louis K. Meisel in 1968. Sometimes labeled as Super-Realism, New Realism, Sharp Focus Realism, or Hyper-Realism.
2. Louis K. Meisel developed a five-point definition at the request of Stuart M. Speiser:-
   • The Photo-Realist uses the camera and photograph to gather information.
   • The Photo-Realist uses a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the information to the canvas.
   • The Photo-Realist must have the technical ability to make the finished work appear photographic.
   • The artist must have exhibited work as a Photo-Realist by 1972 to be considered one of the central Photo-Realists.
   • The artist must have devoted at least five years to the development and exhibition of Photo-Realist work

Style

1. Photorealist painting cannot exist without the photograph.
2. Change and movement must be frozen in time which must then be accurately represented by the artist.
3. Camera and photographs are the primary source to gather information, that aids the progression of photorealism art into another stage.
4. Image of developed photographs will be directly transfer onto canvas precisely. Either by enlarging the image by its aspect ratio, or combining a few photographs to a canvas.
5. Common means of such transfer is by projections or traditional grid techniques.
6. This results in the photorealist style being tight and precise, often with an emphasis on imagery that requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate, such as reflections in specular surfaces and the geometric rigor of man-made environs

Above content is a summary of defining photorealism art movement. Some of the content are duplicated, concise  and mainly the purpose of personal blogging and learning. Original content may be found in Wikipedia, with title of article as “Photorealism”

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1. “Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto”, Describing Picasso’s Portrait Paintings
2. Buddha Portrait Paintings Of Luang Prabang, Laos
3. Perceptions of Drawing Realistic People

Are you one of the self-starter, yet troubled by deciding what is best for you?

You may say, “This is not the main concern, because purchasing a new digital SLR usually comes with a general purpose kit lens”. I agree, it is either a standard zoom lens or a telephoto zoom lens. Even today, I have also noticed that most amateur photographers use kit lens as well. There is nothing wrong with this, and this was what I did back then.

After months of diligence learning in portrait photography, I realized that the results of portrait shoots does not has maximum emphasis. In particularly the background, it looks equally as sharp as the subject. Shouldn’t the background supposed to be blur? Have you experienced this before?

Please read on to learn about the causes and basic criteria for good portrait photograph.

1. Using telephoto zoom lens, wide angle lens, or macro lens is not the key factors for blurring the background. However, it does contribute to the portraiture composition. The main criteria for good portrait is selecting wide aperture for your lens.
2. The aperture of lens refers to the round mechanical openings located at the center of lens. It control the amount of lights passes through and into the digital SLR sensors.
3. Aperture is expressed as F-stop, e.g. F2.8 or f/2.8. The smaller the number, the larger the lens opening.
4. Most of the general purpose kit lens comes with aperture of f4-5.6 or f3.5-5.6.
5. Be selective. Always shoot at the widest aperture setting. Recommended to own a lens with adjustable aperture. At least f/2.8 or lower.
6. This basic feature enable the photographer to create a shallow depth of field. Capable of blurring the background, thus, emphasizing a sharp focus on the portraiture.
7. Simplest settings on for the camera’s body is to use Aperture Priority auto-exposure mode, also know as AP mode. Otherwise, select fully manual mode and experiment it with low F-Stop.

After all, just be reminded that selecting the right lens with wide aperture is very important for good portrait photography. Below portrait photograph has clearly demonstrated the use of  widest aperture setting.

Baby Portrait with Wide Aperture Setting. Specification: 50mm, f1.8

Flickr Photo credit to R.Gringo’s photostream.

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1. Blogging About Basic Photography; 7 Good Posts to Share
2. How to have portrait photography without lighting studio
3. Generic Packing List for Outdoor Portrait Photography

Picasso’s Blue Period consist of paintings which express the characteristic of tense, grave, gloomy or melancholy mood. Paintings dominated by shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors.

Similarly, in this paintings of Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, the artwork depicted an insight into the subject’s life and circle of friends. Elegantly dressed sitter, portraying with his glass of absinthe and his pipe. His depressed look attribute a particularly intense gaze to viewers. The bold, loose, swirling brushstrokes and the cloud of smoke hovering above him, has perfectly manifested a distinguished characteristic afflicting to inner agitation and sadness.

Picasso referred Angel, who was also a painter, as an ‘amusing wastrel.’; literally a lazy person who does not try to achieve anything in life. And it so true that Angel was indulged to drinking and partying, than to the enthusiasm in art.

Angel and Picasso twice shared studios in Barcelona, the second time being during the 1903 trip when Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto was painted. This was the same studio in Riera de Sant Joan that Picasso formerly shared with his friend and fellow artist Carles Casagemas, whose suicide had partly inspired the Blue Period.

Immersed again in these surroundings and these friends, Picasso’s Blue aesthetic flourished, culminating in portraits such as Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto which introduced a revolutionary, subjective psychological quality.

Famous artworks of Picasso’s portrait painting during this Blue Period has now in museum collections. Works includes, Portrait of Sebastià Junyent (1904), Sebastià Junyer-Vidal (1904), Portrait of Señora Soler, Portrait of Benet Soler, and The Soler Family

Recently announced by Christie’s on 17^th March 2010, Picasso paintings on Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, will be offered in the evening auction of Impressionist and Modern Art in London on 23 June 2010. Christie’s will be priced at £30 million to £40 million and all the proceeds will benefit The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, a charity founded by the celebrated composer in 1992.

The paintings, Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, has received much controversy on ownership claims, during an earlier auction in 2006. To the extend that the auction was called off and deemed as an unsuccessful sales.

Click here to read more in this press release by Christie’s – Fine Art Actions.

Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, 1903, Picasso Portrait Paintings

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2. Famous Quote on Portrait Paintings
3. Buddha Portrait Paintings Of Luang Prabang, Laos

The main crafting tool is a woodburning pen. It comes with different heating tips, that function just like brushes for oil paintings. It doesn’t require any medium, therefore, most enthusiast learner will find the setup not cumbersome. The woodburning pen is plug into a temperature controller device. The amount of heat is adjusted, and skillful artist will use this heating tips to burn onto the woods, leaving scorch marks.

Below sharing a portrait using of wood burning, with close-up photos. The shining surface is a coat of lacquer to protect the woodboard.

Related posts:

1. Best Practices For Learning Basic Portrait Art
2. Buddha Portrait Paintings Of Luang Prabang, Laos
3. Photorealism, Describing an Art Movement