Painting Classic Portraits: Great Faces Step by Step by Luana Luconi Winner

After a summer blog vacation I can't wait to tell you about a treasure I've recently found. Luana Luconi Winner’s Painting Classic Portraits: Great Faces Step by Step is simply a book that cannot fail to build confidence and technique. She goes at the task of teaching how to create great portraits with personality by employing a variety of approaches, easy to follow instructions, and abundant color sketches, paintings, and photos. Winner shows you how achieve accurate facial shapes and proportions beginning with the skull and showing how facial features fit over them. She offers color charts for white skin that’s female, male, blonde, redhead, and brunette; for black skin using warm tones and cool tones, for Hispanics, Asians, and both native Indians and continental ones. She works in graphite, charcoal, oils, watercolors, and pastels, and demonstrates preliminary sketches, studies, and finished portraits. She gives detailed instruction about how the face and hands change from childhood through adulthood. And she shows you how to choose backgrounds and accessories that tell the story of the personality being painted. I believe this book is destined to become a classic and I urge you to pick it up at the library and give it your perusal. You may find you need to buy a copy for your studio. 

(And now I apologize. I posted this blog about a month ago--or at least I thought I had. After I posted it I was sure I had checked it--I usually do--and it was there. I went into the site last weekend and it wasn't there! Go figure. So if you came looking for this title and didn't see it, I apologize. Barbara)