An oil painting portrait rewards you fast: a few loaded brushes, a soft light source and a face starts breathing on the canvas within the first hour. Every face below is invented, nobody famous, nobody you need permission to paint, just ordinary people caught in a moment of window light, which is the kindest light there is for skin.
Below are 28 head-and-shoulders portraits, from a quick toddler study to a two-person double portrait, each one finishable in a single sitting on a small canvas. Pick whichever face speaks to you first, squeeze out some warm umber and let’s get painting.
Using these images: free for personal projects such as printing, coloring, cards, journals and gifts. Handmade items that include them may be sold up to 30 pieces per design. More than that is commercial use and is not permitted, and neither is selling or sharing the images themselves or passing them off as your own. Please ask before any other use.
Start here if you have never worked in oil before: a freckled red-haired girl glancing back over her shoulder gives you a simple head turn without a full profile to wrestle. Block in the head shape in thinned burnt umber, mark where the shoulder meets the jaw, then find the tilt of the eyes before anything else, since a turned head reads wrong if the eyeline sits flat.
Build the hair in big warm strokes of burnt sienna and cadmium orange before you touch the face, so the red has somewhere to sit against. Freckles go on last, dotted with a small round brush loaded thin, never stamped on as hard dots or they will look pasted on top.
If this is your first time measuring a turned head, hold your brush up to the canvas and check that the far eye sits noticeably narrower than the near one, that’s what sells the turn. Keep the background a flat, soft grey-blue so the hair and freckles do all the talking.
Today’s tip: mix your freckle colour from burnt sienna and a touch of the skin tone itself, never straight brown, or they will sit on top of the skin instead of in it.
Palette: Burnt Sienna,Cadmium Orange,Titanium White,Dusty Blue
Move from a calm face to a moving one: a silver-haired grandmother laughing with her eyes closed asks you to paint joy instead of a stare, which is actually easier since you never have to get the eyes looking anywhere in particular. Block in the head and shoulders loosely, then find the big shapes first, the open laughing mouth and the crinkled eye sockets, before any detail.
Mix her silver hair from Payne’s grey, white and a whisper of burnt umber so it never goes flat grey, and lay it in broad strokes that follow the direction it falls. Work the laugh lines around her eyes and mouth with a small flat brush, pressing harder where the shadow is deepest and lifting off as you move into the light.
The trap here is painting the laugh too stiffly, so her mouth looks like a frown turned upside down. Step back often and squint, the laugh should read from across the room, not just up close.
No Payne’s grey on hand? A mix of ultramarine and burnt umber makes a near-identical soft charcoal for the hair.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Titanium White,Burnt Umber,Rose Madder
Give yourself a colour problem on purpose: a young man with curly dark hair in a mustard sweater puts a warm yellow right under a face, which changes every skin shadow you mix. Block in the sweater first in flat mustard so you can judge every later skin tone against it, rather than guessing in isolation.
Paint the curls as clusters of darks and lights rather than individual strands, a loaded round brush twisted and dabbed gives you a believable curl in three or four marks. Let some of the mustard bounce up into the underside of his jaw and ear as reflected colour, that’s what makes the sweater feel like it belongs to the face above it.
Where eye level sits matters here: paint him slightly from below, chin up, and the sweater’s collar line reads naturally instead of looking pasted flat across his chest.
No mustard yellow in the box? Mix yellow ochre with a touch of cadmium orange for the same dusty warmth.
Palette: Yellow Ochre,Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Alizarin Crimson
Here’s a face built on clean shapes: a woman with a short black bob and gold hoop earrings gives you sharp, graphic hair against soft skin, a nice contrast to practice. Block the bob in as one solid dark mass first, almost like a helmet shape, then carve the fringe and ear-line into it with the background colour rather than painting hair strokes on top.
The hoops are two quick flicks of a liner brush loaded with a warm gold mix, placed only after the ear and jaw are settled, since earrings painted too early anchor the whole head wrong. Keep her skin smooth and a touch cooler than the warmer faces in this list, since dark hair reflects less warmth back onto the cheek.
The usual slip is painting the bob too thin, so it looks like a swim cap. Keep the hairline soft and slightly uneven where it meets the forehead and neck.
Quick version, ten minutes: block hair, face, one earring flick, done. The forty-minute version adds a second glaze over the hair to deepen it and a soft highlight along the cheekbone.
Palette: Ivory Black,Titanium White,Naples Yellow,Rose Madder
Children’s portraits live or die on the mouth, so a little boy with a gap-toothed grin and messy hair is good practice for painting a true, unguarded smile. Block in the big head shape first, children have larger heads relative to their shoulders than adults, so check that proportion against your reference before you commit to the canvas edge.
Paint the grin as one warm shadowed shape inside the mouth before you add any teeth, then drop in just two or three light dashes for the teeth with the gap left as the warm shadow showing through. Overpainting every tooth is the fastest way to kill this smile, so resist it.
His messy hair wants the same loose, varied strokes as an adult’s, just lighter and more golden since children’s hair catches more light. Leave a few flyaway strands against the background with a dry, almost-empty brush.
Swap tip: no fine liner brush for the teeth? The corner of a small flat brush, turned on its edge, makes the same thin mark.
Palette: Burnt Sienna,Titanium White,Naples Yellow,Rose Madder
Weathered skin asks for a different approach than smooth young skin, so an elderly fisherman with a white beard and a knit cap is a good next step. Block his cap in a flat mid-tone first since it frames the whole face, then work the forehead and cheeks with visible texture, dabbing rather than blending, to suggest decades of wind and sun.
Paint the white beard last, after the face is finished, using thick, dry strokes of titanium white tinted with a touch of grey and umber so it never reads as pure, flat white. Pull some of those beard strokes down over the edge of the jaw to soften the transition.
The place this goes wrong is a beard that looks stuck on like cotton wool. Vary the stroke direction and let a little skin tone show through in the shadowed parts under the chin.
If you enjoy weathered, character-led faces like this one, the oil painting woman ideas cover more mature faces worth practicing on.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Payne’s Grey,Yellow Ochre
Bring the window itself into the painting now: a woman in a silk headscarf gazing out a window lets you paint light falling across a face from one clear direction. Decide where the window sits before you block anything in, then keep every shadow on the far side of the nose and chin consistent with that single source.
Paint the headscarf in broad, simple folds using a limited palette of two or three close colours, since silk reads through smooth value shifts, not through many colours. Her gaze should land somewhere outside the canvas, so leave the far eye slightly softer and less detailed than the near one, which pulls focus toward the window light side of her face.
A common mistake is lighting the whole face evenly, which flattens the mood. Let the shadow side go noticeably darker and cooler, almost dusty blue, to hold the window-light feeling.
Swap tip: no silk reference to study? A photo of a satin ribbon under a lamp shows the same soft, continuous highlight you want here.
Palette: Dusty Blue,Titanium White,Alizarin Crimson,Burnt Umber
Hands enter the portrait here, so a teenage girl with braids resting her chin on her hand asks you to paint a hand believably touching a face, a common sticking point worth tackling early. Block the whole pose in simple geometric shapes first, the forearm as a cylinder, the hand as a loose mitten shape, before you refine any fingers.
Paint the braids as thick ropes of alternating light and dark strokes rather than trying to render each plait strand, twisting your brush slightly as you pull each stroke down to suggest the braid’s twist. Where her chin rests on her hand, press the skin slightly to show the hand supporting real weight, a small dent or fold where fingers meet jaw sells the whole pose.
Fingers painted too thin or too straight are the usual giveaway of a rushed hand. Keep each finger slightly bent and slightly different in length.
If portraits with a thoughtful, resting pose appeal to you, the reading painting ideas have more quiet, chin-on-hand moments to borrow from.
Palette: Burnt Sienna,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Yellow Ochre
Mixed-tone hair is its own small puzzle, and a man with a salt-and-pepper beard in a linen shirt is a clean way to practice it. Block the beard shape in a mid grey first, then work both darker umber strokes and lighter white-grey strokes into it wet-in-wet, letting them mix slightly on the canvas rather than premixing a flat uniform grey.
Paint the linen shirt with a dry, slightly broken brush to suggest its woven texture, dragging the brush so some canvas tooth shows through the pale blue-grey of the fabric. Keep the shirt loose and secondary, the beard and eyes should hold all the detail in this piece.
If the beard ends up looking uniformly grey and flat, it needs more contrast: push a few strokes properly dark and a few properly light, right next to each other.
No linen-coloured paint mixed yet? A touch of raw umber into titanium white gets you there in two strokes.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Titanium White,Raw Umber,Dusty Blue
Proportions shift again here, so a toddler with chubby cheeks and wide blue eyes needs its own measuring rule: the eyes sit roughly at the horizontal midline of the whole head, lower than you expect, with a shorter distance from eye to chin than any adult face you have painted so far. Hold your brush up against your reference to check this before you commit to the canvas.
Block the round cheeks as soft, full shapes with a flat brush, no sharp cheekbone planes exist yet at this age, everything stays smooth and gently rounded. Paint the wide eyes with a good amount of white showing above the iris, which is what reads as that open, startled toddler look.
If the face starts looking older than intended, check the forehead: it should take up noticeably more of the head than in any teen or adult portrait here.
Palette swap: no cerulean for the eyes? A touch of ultramarine lightened well with white gives a similar soft baby blue.
Palette: Cerulean Blue,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Naples Yellow
Bone structure takes center stage now: a dancer with her hair scraped back and her eyes closed strips the face down to its underlying planes, since there is no loose hair to hide the jaw or temple. Block the skull shape first as a clean oval, then map the cheekbone and jaw edges with slightly darker tone before adding any feature.
With her eyes closed, spend your detail budget on the eyelid itself, a thin warm shadow line along the lash edge and a soft highlight just above it does more than any amount of lash painting would. Keep the scraped-back hair almost flat against the skull, one smooth dark shape with just a sheen of highlight along its crown.
The trap is making a closed-eye face look asleep rather than calm and composed. Keep the brow slightly lifted and the mouth relaxed, not slack, to hold that poised dancer’s stillness.
Today’s tip: paint the neck a touch longer than feels natural, it reads as elegant rather than wrong once the hair is scraped back this tightly.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Payne’s Grey
Strong colour against deep skin is a lovely problem to have, and a woman with deep brown skin in a coral head wrap gives you exactly that. Mix her skin tone from burnt umber, alizarin crimson and a little yellow ochre, building it up in at least two values, since deep skin tones show warm and cool shifts just as clearly as pale skin, only at a different base note.
Block the coral wrap in boldly before refining the face, its warmth will bounce light back up under her chin and along her cheekbones, which you need to see early to mix the right reflected colour there. Keep the wrap’s folds simple, three or four large shapes rather than many small creases.
Underpainting deep skin too dark and flat, with no warm or cool variation, is the most common miss. Build it in layers, letting an earlier warmer layer glow through a cooler one on top.
If rich, warm colour stories interest you beyond portraits, the oil painting flowers ideas use a similarly warm, layered palette.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Alizarin Crimson,Cadmium Orange,Yellow Ochre
Two faces in one canvas changes your approach, so a young mother kissing her baby on the forehead needs you to decide early which face carries the most detail. Give the mother’s face slightly more finish since she faces more outward, while the baby’s face, tucked and partly turned, can stay softer and less resolved.
Block both heads together as one connected shape first, checking that the baby’s head sits correctly smaller and lower against the mother’s chin and shoulder, before separating them with colour and edge. Paint the kiss itself as a soft, almost merged shape where her lips meet the baby’s forehead, no hard line between them.
Keeping both faces equally sharp is the easiest way to make this feel stiff and posed. Let edges melt together at the point of contact and sharpen only where the eye should land first, usually the mother’s eyes.
Quick version, ten minutes: simple shapes, soft merged kiss, done. The forty-minute version adds individual hair strands and a glaze of warm light across both foreheads.
Palette: Rose Madder,Titanium White,Naples Yellow,Burnt Sienna
Light and shadow take the lead on this one: a girl whose sunhat casts a soft shadow over her eyes asks you to commit to a strong cast shadow rather than softening it away out of habit. Decide the light direction first, then paint the hat’s shadow as one connected dark shape sweeping across the forehead and eyes before you place a single feature underneath it.
Work the eyes as soft, lower-contrast shapes seen through that shadow, never as sharp as the sunlit chin and mouth below, or the shadow will stop reading as a shadow at all. The brim of the hat itself wants a crisp top edge against the sky but a much softer underside, since its own shadow falls on its own inner curve too.
If the whole face looks murky instead of shadowed, add one small, clear reflected light under the shadow line, bounced up warm from the lit chin.
If this kind of soft, shadowed light over a face appeals to you, it pairs well with the breezy outdoor mood of the easy beach watercolor ideas for a summer series.
Palette: Yellow Ochre,Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Rose Madder
Props and gesture come in together now: a grandfather with round glasses reading a letter gives you a face angled down, which changes every proportion you would expect from a straight-on portrait. Check the eye level carefully, a downward-tilted head shows more of the top of the glasses frame and less of the eyes themselves than you might assume, so measure against your reference rather than guessing.
Block the round glasses as two simple ovals linked by a thin bridge, painted after the eyes underneath are blocked in, so the lenses can carry a soft reflection of the window light without hiding the eyes completely. The letter itself needs only a few economical strokes, a pale rectangle with two or three implied lines of text, nothing legible or fussy.
Glasses painted as opaque white circles are the usual mistake, which blanks out the eyes entirely. Keep the lenses mostly transparent, with just a hint of highlight along one edge.
Swap tip: no wire for a thin glasses bridge? A fine liner brush or even a toothpick dipped in paint draws a crisp single line.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Payne’s Grey,Yellow Ochre
Return to braided hair with a fuller, older version of the technique: a woman with long grey hair braided over one shoulder lets you paint a single long braid as its own compositional element running down across the chest. Block the braid as one long, gently curving shape first, then build its twist with alternating light and dark strokes the same way as any braid, just longer and looser here.
Her grey hair wants the same warm-cool mixing as the laughing grandmother earlier in this list, Payne’s grey and white with a touch of umber, never flat neutral grey, or it will look chalky against her warm skin. Let the braid’s end taper and loosen slightly with a few dry, flicked strokes rather than ending in a hard, cut-off shape.
If the braid looks like a rope rather than hair, vary the stroke width along its length and let a few flyaway strands escape its edge.
The classical oil painting ideas include more long, flowing hair studies if you want to keep practicing this kind of braid work.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Titanium White,Burnt Umber,Rose Madder
Give a child’s portrait a prop to hold, and a boy in a striped shirt holding a small paper boat becomes a composition rather than just a face. Block the striped shirt in as flat bands of colour painted with the canvas tilted slightly, so gravity helps each stripe stay straight and even as you pull the brush across.
Paint the paper boat as a few crisp folded planes in pure white and pale grey, its sharp geometric edges a nice contrast against the soft round face above it. Keep the boat small in the frame and slightly turned, held rather than displayed flat to the viewer, which keeps the whole pose natural.
Stripes that go wavy or curve with the fabric are the most common slip here. Lightly pencil the stripe lines onto your underpainting first if your hand is not steady with a loaded brush.
If you enjoy children’s portraits with small story props like this, the watercolor hot air balloon ideas have a similar playful, handheld-object feel worth a look.
Palette: Dusty Blue,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Payne’s Grey
A true profile is its own discipline, so a woman in profile with a high collar and small gold earrings is worth tackling once the earlier faces feel comfortable. Draw the profile line first as one continuous curve from forehead to chin before adding any feature, since a profile lives or dies on that single silhouette edge.
Block the high collar as a strong, simple shape framing the jaw and neck, painted slightly darker than the skin so it reads as fabric sitting behind the face rather than merging into it. Place the single visible earring last, a tiny warm gold dash just below the ear, after the jaw and neck line are fully settled.
Profiles painted with too straight a nose bridge look flat and lifeless. Check your reference for the small bump or gentle curve along the bridge, every real profile has some variation there.
Today’s tip: step back and view the profile silhouette alone, squinting until the features blur, that single curved line is what needs to feel right before anything else.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Payne’s Grey,Naples Yellow
Bring real motion into the face again: a young woman with a pixie cut laughing at someone off canvas gives you an open, candid expression aimed away from the viewer, which feels looser and more alive than a direct gaze. Block her gaze line clearly toward one side of the canvas before refining any feature, so the whole head angle supports that off-canvas focus.
Paint the short pixie cut in a few confident, chunky strokes rather than many thin ones, since short hair reads through its overall shape far more than through individual pieces. Let her open, laughing mouth show a touch of warm shadow inside rather than painting it as a flat pink shape, which keeps it from looking like a simple smile sticker.
A gaze that drifts too far off to the side can feel disconnected from the rest of the pose. Keep the shoulders turned slightly toward wherever her eyes are looking, so the whole figure feels like one coherent gesture.
Swap tip: unsure how short hair catches light? A single dry-brushed highlight along the crown does more work than several small scattered ones.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Cadmium Orange
Return to character and texture with a man in a flat cap with a weathered, kind face, a good companion piece to the earlier fisherman. Block the flat cap’s simple rounded shape first, since it sits heavy and close over the forehead and changes exactly where shadow falls across the eyes below it.
Paint the weathered skin with visible, choppy brushstrokes rather than smooth blending, letting ridges of thicker paint catch real light across the forehead and cheeks the way age and weather do on real skin. Keep the eyes warm and kind even against all that texture, a soft highlight in each iris keeps the face from reading as simply tired or hard.
Overworking the wrinkles into a grid of hard lines is the easy trap. Suggest age through a handful of well-placed shadow shapes rather than many thin drawn lines.
If you enjoy these character studies of ordinary, invented faces, the oil painting woman ideas round out the set with more mature portrait subjects.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Titanium White,Yellow Ochre,Payne’s Grey
A quiet expression needs just as much care as a bold one, so a girl with round glasses and a shy half smile is about restraint. Block the round glasses the same way as the grandfather’s earlier, two linked ovals, but keep the lenses here almost fully transparent, since a young face reads better with the eyes clearly visible through them.
Paint the shy half smile with one side of the mouth lifted just slightly more than the other, a tiny asymmetry that reads instantly as genuine rather than posed. Keep her whole palette soft and a touch cool, pale pinks and creams, to match that quiet, slightly shy mood rather than the bolder warmth of a laughing face.
A smile painted perfectly symmetrical is the giveaway of a stiff, unconvincing portrait. Nudge one corner of the mouth, one eyebrow, slightly off from its mirror.
Today’s tip: half-close your own eyes while mixing her skin tone, it is easier to judge a soft, muted palette correctly without full daylight glare on your palette.
Palette: Rose Madder,Titanium White,Naples Yellow,Dusty Blue
Keep the palette deliberately quiet for a change: a woman with a sleek low ponytail in a cream blouse is almost a tonal painting, everything close in value and warmth. Block the cream blouse first since it sets the lightest value in the whole piece, every skin shadow and hair tone then gets judged and mixed against that creamy base.
Paint the ponytail as one smooth, unbroken shape pulled low and tight, a single long highlight running along its top length is enough, resist adding texture strokes that would fight its sleekness. Keep her expression calm and her gaze level and direct, which suits this restrained, elegant palette far better than a big smile would.
Everything painted in such close values risks looking flat and muddy if you are not careful. Hold back one genuinely dark accent, perhaps in the eyes or the shadow under the jaw, to anchor the whole value range.
No cream paint ready-mixed? Titanium white with a tiny touch of yellow ochre gets you there in one stroke.
Palette: Titanium White,Yellow Ochre,Burnt Umber,Rose Madder
Painting twins means painting the same face twice with tiny, deliberate differences, so twin sisters pressed cheek to cheek is a lovely test of that balance. Block both heads as a single connected shape first, since where their cheeks press together, the boundary between them should almost disappear rather than show as a hard line.
Mix one shared base skin tone for both faces, then introduce the smallest variations, a slightly different highlight placement, a slightly different angle of smile, so they read as individuals rather than one face stamped twice. Keep their hair similar in colour but let one side’s strands fall a little differently than the other’s, since real twins are never perfectly identical in detail.
Making both faces too perfectly symmetrical to each other is the obvious trap, and it reads as uncanny rather than charming. Let small, human differences stay visible.
Quick version, ten minutes: shared block-in, one shared highlight pass. The forty-minute version adds those small individual differences in a second pass.
Palette: Rose Madder,Titanium White,Burnt Sienna,Naples Yellow
Give the portrait a wink of its own medium: a painter with a smudge of blue paint on her cheek is a fun, self-aware subject to close the figurative section on. Paint the face fully first, finished and settled, before adding the smudge, which always goes on as the very last mark so it reads as sitting on top of real skin.
Mix the smudge from a cool, slightly chalky blue, thinned more than the rest of the face so it looks accidental and thin rather than opaque and deliberate. Keep its edges soft and slightly smeared, as if dragged there by the back of a hand, never a clean geometric shape.
Painting the smudge too early, or too thick and solid, makes it look like body paint rather than an accident. Add it with a near-dry brush in one or two light passes only.
If you like playful studio self-portraits like this, the oil painting abstract ideas are a fun, looser palette companion to try next.
Palette: Dusty Blue,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Burnt Umber
Modern props sit well in an otherwise timeless style, and a teenage boy with headphones around his neck gives you a small, familiar shape to anchor the composition below the face. Block the headphones as two simple rounded forms linked by a soft curved band, painted after the neck and collar are settled so they sit correctly around the throat rather than floating.
Keep his expression relaxed and a little distant, eyes slightly unfocused or looking just past the viewer, which suits the half-listening mood headphones suggest even when he is not actually wearing them over his ears. Paint the headphone band’s highlight as one clean curved stroke, since a shiny plastic band catches light very differently from skin or fabric.
Headphones painted too small or too tight against the neck can look like a collar rather than headphones. Give the band some real distance from the throat so its shape reads clearly.
Today’s tip: a single cool highlight along the headphone band, kept crisp while everything else stays soft, instantly signals hard plastic against soft skin.
Palette: Payne’s Grey,Titanium White,Rose Madder,Burnt Umber
Cold-weather colour returns here: a woman with rosy cheeks wrapped in a chunky scarf lets you push warmth into the face while the scarf itself carries the texture interest. Block the scarf first in thick, visible ridges of paint applied with a palette knife or stiff bristle brush, since its chunky knit texture should feel genuinely raised and tactile against the smoother skin.
Paint her rosy cheeks with a soft, concentrated blush of rose madder worked wet-in-wet into the base skin tone, right at the apple of the cheek, so the colour blooms outward rather than sitting as a hard circle. Keep the scarf’s colour close to but distinct from the skin tone, so the two warm areas relate without competing.
Overblending the rosy cheeks until they vanish is a common accident, especially with a soft brush. Leave a little of that concentrated colour undisturbed at its center.
No palette knife on hand for the scarf’s texture? A stiff, dry bristle brush dabbed rather than dragged gets a similar knitted look.
You Will Need
- palette knife (optional, for the scarf texture)
Palette: Rose Madder,Titanium White,Burnt Sienna,Dusty Blue
If you like painting chunky knit texture, the same palette-knife technique works beautifully in the scarves and mittens across the winter oil painting ideas.
Close this double-portrait pairing with its gentlest version: a grandmother and granddaughter touching foreheads mirrors the mother-and-baby portrait earlier but across a wider age gap, which changes the contrast between the two faces considerably. Block both heads together first, checking that the older face sits noticeably larger and more weathered in texture than the smooth, rounder younger one beside it.
Paint the point of contact where their foreheads meet as one soft, merged passage of colour and light, blending the two skin tones gently into each other right at that touch. Vary your brushwork deliberately between them, looser and more textured strokes for the grandmother, smoother and more blended strokes for the granddaughter, which reinforces the age contrast without needing any extra detail.
Matching both faces in finish and smoothness flattens this contrast and the whole point of the piece. Let the brushwork itself carry some of the storytelling.
If gentle, generational portrait moments like this appeal to you, it pairs naturally with the quiet, reflective mood of the reading painting ideas as a companion piece.
Palette: Rose Madder,Titanium White,Burnt Umber,Payne’s Grey
Finish the set on strong, simple light: a man with dark skin in a white shirt lit from one side puts the full weight of the portrait on value contrast rather than colour variety. Block the lit side of the face first in its lightest, warmest value, then build the shadow side a full step or two darker and noticeably cooler, since a single hard light source creates real, confident contrast rather than a gentle gradient.
Mix his deep skin tone from burnt umber and alizarin crimson with only a little white, keeping the shadow side of the face closer to that unmixed depth while the lit side gets built up with warmer, lighter additions. Paint the white shirt last, letting its brightest highlight sit exactly on the lit side to match the face above it, with the shadow side of the shirt dropping into a soft blue-grey.
Lighting both sides of the face evenly erases the whole mood of this piece. Commit fully to the dark side staying dark, resisting the urge to lift detail out of it.
Today’s tip: half-close your eyes often while painting this one, squinting shows you the two big value masses clearly and keeps you from softening the contrast by accident.
Palette: Burnt Umber,Alizarin Crimson,Titanium White,Dusty Blue
What to Do Next
Pick one face that caught your eye on the first scroll through and set up a small canvas today: squeeze out your six core colours, thin a little burnt umber for the block-in, and start with the big head shape before any feature. The rest of this list will still be here next time you want another face to paint.
Frequently Asked Questions
What oil paint colours do you need for an oil painting portrait?
A workable portrait palette is titanium white, burnt umber, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson and a blue like ultramarine or Payne’s grey. These six mix nearly every skin tone, hair colour and shadow you will need across a head-and-shoulders portrait.
How long does an oil painting portrait take to finish?
A simple head-and-shoulders portrait on a small canvas finishes in a single sitting of two to four hours. Oil stays workable while wet, so a beginner can block in, develop and finish a face without the paint drying out mid-session.
How do you mix realistic skin tones in oil paint?
Start with white, a little yellow ochre and a touch of alizarin crimson, then adjust warmer or cooler for different areas of the face. Shadows usually need more burnt umber or a touch of blue, never just a darker version of the same mix.
What size canvas is best for a first oil portrait?
An 8 by 10 inch or 9 by 12 inch canvas suits a first head-and-shoulders portrait well. It is large enough to fit real brushwork and detail, yet small enough to finish comfortably in one sitting.
Do you need a photo reference to paint an invented portrait face?
A loose reference helps even for an invented face, since it keeps proportions and light believable. Sketch or search for a face with a similar age, hair and lighting, then change the details freely as you paint.