Byzantine Iconography Painting Series 3: Painting the Face 1

Welcome to Painting Series 3 Part 1 in which we begin out journey into painting the Face. If you are a beginner, I recommend that before starting this series you complete at least Series 1 on Drawing Faces and Painting Series Part 1: Painting Basics so that you have the right foundation to start this series. In this Series we will be painting several types of faces; young and old, frontal and 3/4. But  now in Part 1 to start off we're going to study how we paint the individual facial features: noses and mouths, ears and eyes, which will make it easier to put everything together when we paint the full face.

The basic material you will need for these tutorials are:

1. Pigments

   • Yellow Ochre (or Iron Oxide Yellow)

   • Iron Oxide Black

   • Light Mars Red (or Red Ochre)

   • Medium Mars Red

   • Titanium White

2. Egg Emulsion

   • Egg

   • White wine

   • Lavender or Basil essential oil

3. 2 Plastic dropper bottles for egg emulsion and water

4. Paint brushes (rounds with a good tip, flats and riggers)

5. Palette for mixing paint (a sheet of glass or plexiglass is optional)

6. Container of water for cleaning brushes.

7. Paper towel

8. Hot press watercolour paper for painting exercises.

Resource PDFs with photographs of each stage of the painting process as well as related icons are included for each lesson.