Fun Portrait Studies - Paint Quick Expressive Faces

1. Introduction: Wouldn't you enjoy being able to capture the essence of a person in a few expressive brushstrokes? Hi, I'm Gabriela Shel, a concept artist and illustrator. And today, I want to show you a fun and easy way to paint people while actually improving your portrait painting skills at the same time. In my professional career, I had to paint many portraits, either of fictional characters or of real people. Portrait related tasks or commissions are one of my favorite subjects to work on, and with time, I've had the opportunity to try many different approaches to improve my portrait skills. In this class, I want to show you my favorite approach to quick and fun portrait studies. We will be painting Expressive Portrait Studies using big brushstrokes and bold colors. Those studies will help you improve your overall portrait painting skills while being quick, useful, and most importantly, fun at the same time. Before we jump into the painting process, we will discuss why art studies matter and some common ways to improve your art skills in general. Later, we will take a moment to discuss selecting the right reference photos and how this can impact the overall painting process. Lastly, I will guide you through two real time painting demos where I explain my thought process in detail. So grab your digital tablet or iPad, and let's dive into the fun world of expressive portraits. 2. Class Orientation: If you've watched any of my other classes, you know that I love to combine a bit of theory with a lot of practice. In my previous classes here on Skillshare, we practice our value painting skills either with quick movie still studies in my class, tonal value studies, due value exercises for stronger paintings, or with Expressive black and white portraits in my class, digital oil painting, create expressive painterly portraits and Procreate, where we practice to see values and learn about facial anatomy and structure. Those valuable skills can be useful in this class. But even if you haven't watched the other classes or even painted portraits before, don't worry. I invite you to dive into the fun world of Loose expressive portrait painting. In this class, we will be painting simple, colorful portrait studies using reference photos. At the beginning, we will take a moment to talk about art studies in general and the different ways there are to study art. Later, we will discuss what to look for in good reference images to make painting portraits easy. In the following painting demonstrations, I will show you how I approach portrait studies from photos. You will see how I structure the painting, how I use color, and how I use the brushes. For the class project, I encourage you to create your own expressive portrait painting and upload it to the class project section. I will take a look and comment on each project I see personally and give you tips and suggestions. I will be working in Artstudio Pro on my iPad, but you can also work in Procreate, Photoshop or any other painting app or software you use. I will also provide you with some reference images for you to choose from, or you can use your own references, keeping in mind the suggestions from the section of the class where we talk about choosing reference photos. But the most important thing is to have fun. Painting portrait studies can be so much fun, and that is the most important thing I don't want you to forget when diving in. So in the next lesson, we will take a moment to talk about art studies. See you there? 3. About art studies: Before we dive into the painting process, let's take a quick moment to talk about art studies in general. Art studies are a great way to improve your art. While you can obviously improve your art by creating finished paintings or illustrations, choosing specific elements to study in art can be extremely beneficial and lead to much quicker improvement. Some of my other classes, I outline specific elements and how you can improve your art skills. Art studies can take a variety of different forms. For example, you can create a still life by placing some objects in front of you and try to capture them as correctly as possible on paper or canvas. And therefore, you train your hand eye coordination and perspective. You can also use watercolor or gouache to paint a plain air from life to capture the colors and the mood of a landscape. You could also study how something is built. For example, medieval armor by sketching it from photos or even directly in a museum to understand its structure for your next character illustration. Studies can be quick sketches, either capturing the most important elements of something, or they can be longer paintings to see how close we can get to realism. We can create stylistic studies, copying an old master to see how this artist used colors, or we can use a photo reference to create a stylized version of reality. Whatever it is, studies are a fundamental part of improving your art. Can also use photo references to study virtually any element you want to understand, be it design, character, anatomy, structure, color scheme or more. The later will be the subject of this class. While learning by doing in terms of working on a bigger final project will also lead to improvement. Short focused art studies allow you to dive deeper into a specific topic and fully concentrate on improving that part of the painting. Portraits are a wonderful way to improve in many areas at the same time. I can practice my character design skills, improve my color and light understanding, work on improving brushstrokes, or simply work on anatomy and structure of the face. That's why I love painting rough expressive portrait studies from references. It teaches me how to capture the likeness of a person while keeping the painting simple, thus focusing on a few well placed brushstrokes, color scheme, values, and brushwork. As we will work with limited brushstrokes, each one can be used to add expression or texture to the image. But that's all quite a bit for one study, don't you agree? That brings me to my next point, the importance of choosing a focus for your studies. While we strive to generally improve our art, it's advisable to choose one or two specific elements you want to work on specifically in that particular study. If you were focusing on everything in the reference photo, we would just be making perfect photocopies. While those studies can be beneficial, they also tend to be a bit overwhelming and more time consuming. I recommend choosing a few elements you want to focus on when creating a study. In our class, since we will be painting portraits, the focus could be either the structure, for example, getting the facial proportions right, or it could be choosing the correct colors without picking them from the reference image. It could also be brushwork. How can you use big brushstrokes to make the illustration look interesting? It could also be style or character. How can you exaggerate the facial feature slightly to make the portrait look more interesting? In my other class, digital oil painting, create expressive painterly portraits and Procreate, I explain the structure of the face. If you're interested in learning more about the anatomy of the head, I recommend taking a look at the lesson structure of the face, which can help with finding the right proportions when eyeballing the portrait. In my demonstrations, I will be focusing mostly on color and brush work. Keeping values in mind, we will dive into expressive brushstrokes, looking for what makes the person in the reference image unique to capture its essence, yet without aiming for exact likeness. I will also be focusing on choosing the right colors without color picking and overworking. I will be using rough expressive brushstrokes, slowly building up the figure and narrowing everything down. While I will be paying attention to the proportions and likeness of the portrait, it won't be my main focus of the study. So feel free to choose your own focus of the study. There's only one important thing to play around, to experiment, and to have fun while painting. In the next lesson, we will take a short moment to talk about choosing good reference images. See you in the next lesson. 4. References: References are a very important part of the creative process. In several of my courses, I talk quite a bit about the importance of a good reference image for your painting. Especially when making photo studies, the quality of your reference image can decide whether it's going to be a productive, fun, and successful study or a frustrating experience. The most important part is the lighting. Having a well lit image, especially one that isn't too retouched or edited, can give you the necessary information to make decisions on what to include in your painting or not. With paintings that are too flat because of studio lighting, too edited to properly see color, we deprive ourselves of useful information that can be used to make a painting feel alive. Of course, you also want the image to have relatively good resolution. Since we are going to be painting rough, not very detailed portraits, resolution isn't of such a big importance in our case. The lighting nonetheless is. For portraits, I usually prefer photos with natural lighting. In this case, you always have reflected lighting from the background that will make sure the photos are well lit. And in case of direct sunlight, you will have interesting chados to paint, which will help to show the form of the face. Avoid overly edited photos made in studios, such as those we can see in fashion magazines. They make painting expressive portraits much harder. I find most of my reference photos for photo studies either on Pinterest or generally on the web. You can use websites like An Splash or Pixel Bay for royalty free photos as well. For this class, I added a collection of street photography with different kinds of people, most of them lit by natural light. They all have interesting, unique faces and plenty of visual information to choose from. You can see the elements you like in the pass to stylize or emphasize, making the study more interesting and fun. I will provide a Pinterest board with the selection of the photos. You can keep the Pinterest board open while painting or download the image directly to your device. From there, you can either post it on the canvas to have a side by side setup or have it open in a separate window, for example, in apps like ISRf. There is also the function of reference photo and Procreate and Artstudio Pro, which is also very useful, allowing you to have a floating reference image directly in your canvas. The next lesson, we will dive into the first demo, where I will show you one of the possible approaches to painting rough and quick portrait sketches. So see you there. 5. Demo 1: Let's jump to the demo. This will be a shorter, quicker sketch. We will be focusing on colors and keeping the brushstrokes rough. I found this amazing photo of a man with yellow headphones. I think the shot itself is a masterpiece. It has so much color contrast. The blue background, the complimentary yellow in the headphones and the warm, rosy tones of his skin against the cold blue of the background. I just love it. So I will be making a loose portrait study of this guy. Have my reference photo open in a separate window. I put Pro lets you split your screen, and I think it's easier because you can just have it next to you at the exact proportions and size you want to paint your canvas. I use the app Vis Rf, and it's super comfy to just drop all your references into one board and just switch between them whenever you need one. I like to start on a color background, as it will give me the right information from the start about color relationships. I have my background on a separate layer and a new transparent layer on top to start sketching. I use a rough square textured brush from my painterly portrait brush pack on Artstudio Pro or Procreate. If you work in Procreate, you can use the default Niko rule or any other textured brush you like, which allows you to make clear lines. So let's start with the sketch. I sketch the rough outlines of the person. Since we are not aiming at the perfect realist copy, if you change the proportion slightly, it's not a big deal. Feel free to exaggerate whatever you want to. One thing that really helps me with finding the right proportions is focusing on the negative space. So let's say, instead of focusing on the form of the head of the guy or any details, I just focus on the negative space the shape of his figure creates against the background. I find it much easier that way to find the right proportions. I leave my sketch quite rough and move into color directly. I like to fill the outlines with the middle tones of each color I see. I still work on the same layer because, again, I don't want it to be a perfectly polished work, and I want to imitate the traditional way of working as much as possible. I fill the cap with a dark blue color and roughly sketch in the lighter parts with a lighter color. Again, very rough, very quick. You can also see that with each brush stroke, the tone and saturation slightly change. It's something you can change in the adjustments. That way, I have a bigger variety of color with each brush stroke without having to choose it separately. You can find the adjustments under brush adjustments. In Artstudio Pro, they are under jitter, stroke, color, hue and saturation. I'll leave it somewhere between 2% and 5%. And the procreate under brush Studio, color dynamics, and stroke color jitter. I adjust hue and saturation, but usually try to leave lightness as it is, as it can impact the values too much. I add a lighter color into the skin, as well, focusing on where the light falls in the image, such as his cheek, nose, and the chin area. Choosing a lighter beige tone and also marking his red hair with a reddish brown. I use the same colour to mark the shadow of his eyes to start building up more color variety in the painting. And I also use the same color on his mustache. As I continue painting, I adjust and correct the outline of his face and the overall shape of his portrait. I color pick the skin color to adjust the nose and the profile of his face. I also choose a slightly darker color to add more shadow to the nose and use it to work on other areas of the face that need a darker color. At this point, I start color picking the colors directly from the canvas. It's a constant back and forth, adding darker shades, color picking and adding on top lighter colors. I always try to move the brush in the direction of the object surface. In this case, the direction of the skin to show plasticity. My brush is a wet brush, which means it slightly smudges when painting. I love it as it gives a unique effect to the brushstrokes. But you can also use just a normal brush and color pick in the middle of two colors to create a new color. In that way, blend two colors together. I also like to use elastify or liquefy to adjust proportions in the face. It's a very useful tool which you can use to change your painting non destructively. I'm adding some highlights to the cap by color picking the base color of the heat and moving it in the color wheel to a lighter point of the same color tone. I add some brushstrokes of that new color to where the light hits the head, mostly the cap and the upper parts. I also add some different blue tones, and without pressing too much on the pencil, start painting over it to softly blend the strokes. I use the same color on the shirt. Now, let's go for the jacket. I chose a brown color for his jacket. The fur part is darker, so I choose a darker middle tone. The jacket part is lighter in general, and it has quite a bit of gray in it, as well as other colors, if you look closely. I add some different tones, such as yellowish and pink tone colors to add more variety. Don't worry if it looks too exaggerated or too strong at first. We will be painting over it and softening the transition with time. Whenever I paint, I'm figuring things out as I go. I use circular movements of the brush to insinuate the texture of the fur. You can play around with movement of the hand yourself to create interesting new textures and forms. I chose a bright yellow color to paint the headphones. The color I chose is much more saturated than the one in the reference on purpose, as I think it will make the portrait pop out more against the blue background. Those are the little decisions you can make while you paint that will add your unique touch to your study. I work on the same layer, but you can also do it on a separate layer if you feel more comfortable. With the lighter color, I mark the edges of the headphones, which catch the light to show the plasticity. At this point, I slowly start further defining the sketch. I use a dark blue colour to mark the darkest parts of the cap to show the occlusion shadows. I vary the brush sizes regularly to match the parts that I'm working on. I leave the brushstrokes very rough because I really want to keep the sketch loose and have that painterly feeling. It's a really great exercise to try to match the color you see on the reference without color picking. It will train your brain to better understand different tones, and I highly recommend doing that instead of just color picking the reference photo. Let's add the sunglasses. I chose a dark blue colour to make it more colorful and added some reflected highlights to it with a white colour. I really like to add some tiny details to enhance the feeling of realism. You can mark the seams of the jeans cap with some rough brushstrokes and also add the broken part of the cap on top. I really love little imperfections and how they make the image feel more alive. With the light blue color, I add another layer of paint this time showing the lightest parts of the cap. On the jacket, I correct the shape and start adding more color variety. It has a lot of reflected light from the blue, so I added some light flue on the back and browns of the darker parts. You can show textile patterns by marking small lines, insinuating the patterns of the shirt. Sometimes it's enough to just insinuate something, or brains have the magical capacity to fill in the picture. Once I've established the bigger parts, I start zooming in to work on smaller details. I like to add more shadows and lights working with smaller brush size. Here I outline the form and shadow of the nose and add some color variety to his mustache. In the reference photo, you can see some bright red hair strands, which I decided to add to my painting as well. I also define his face and the planes of his face somewhat more, as well as the shadows under the sunglasses. I really recommend rotating your brush and the inclination of your hand to match the brush direction to the painting. That way, you create the texture and structure of the painting in one go. I also add some wrinkles and paint with a bigger softer brushstrokes to connect different brushstrokes to a more homogeneous look. You can do that by either lowering the opacity of your brush or if your brush already has good opacity dynamics when pressing, you can achieve that by making very light strokes. That way, they will be half transparent and add another layer of color on top. I also recommend zooming out regularly to have the overall look and mind. Now, I add some lights to make the face more tree dimensional. I added some harsh highlights on the cheek, which I don't like. You can see me double tap here on Canvas to go back. I use a slightly warmer color to paint the light highlights on the cheek. The color matches much better now. I add some more of that color into other areas of the face. I purposefully keep the reference image smaller so that I can focus on the over light parts of the face without getting lost in the details. When I choose a color, I like to add it to all parts that could benefit from it instead of working on one particular part of the image. In this case, I use the color from the cheeks to add some highlights to the sunglasses. I pay attention to where the light falls first. On his cheek bones, to nasal label fold, the chin, and the wrinkles on his neck. Apart from that, we also have light falling on his cap, the headphones, and the shoulder. I use a cooler brown tone to add some cold shadows on his chin, under the lip and on the nose. I like to find the colors by color picking the skin tone and then using the color wheel to move it towards darker and less saturated colors. That way, you can still ensure you're working with the right base color. With a darker reddish color, I darkened the shadows from his nose, cap, and the headphones under his glasses. I use linear movements when painting the shadows from the headphones. That way I simultaneously mark the skin folds from his neck while also adding depth due to the shadow. I really recommend paying attention to the direction of your brushstrokes. It's such a powerful way to improve your paintings. I started refining the jacket. I used the eraser tool to change the overall shape of his jacket as my initial sketch was very quick and didn't properly capture the structure and proportions of the silhouette. I also add a bit more of the neck, which wasn't visible in my initial sketch. I think it's actually one of the most recognizable elements of this person and gives him that unique character. When I'm working on facial features, it's sometimes really hard to put into words what makes a person looks unique. When painting, I oftentimes try to describe what I see in words. For example, while I clean the silhouette of the mouth, I would think something like he has his lips pursed thoughtfully or he has his mouth tightened. It's not always easy to find the right word to describe it in my opinion, but at least trying to think about it makes finding the unique facial features of a person much easier. I'm nearing the end of the study. I want to leave it rough and painterly without any detailing. I will leave the background as it is in the study, but you can add some color variations if you like, like you can see in the background of the photo. Don't forget to save your painting and export to JPEG or PNG and post it on the project section of the class. Can't wait to see all your paintings and see you in the next demo. 6. Demo 2: I start by opening a new reference image in my V ref again, having the iPad view split in two. Once again, I have a separate background layer which I fill in with a color. I add a new transparent layer on top, which I will be using to paint on. I start by roughly sketching the face. Since the painting has a slightly more complex face, I like to mark the orientation of the face with a line or across and then proceed to paint the outline of the person. Once again, I orient myself on the negative spaces and roughly mark the different elements of the figure, such as clothing, patterns, hat with simple lines. I like to sketch the facial features very roughly, the outline of the eyes, the nose, the faults and wrinkles, the chin, and the facial hair. I take some time working on the sketch to capture the character of this person. What really helps is to try to put it into words. For example, while I'm sketching and looking at the reference, I might be thinking something like his mouth is slightly turned down. The lips look pursed, but the lower part of his mouth right under the lips slightly protruding. He looks like he's pensive and maybe even slightly annoyed or irritated. The eyebags and the eye direction even give him a slightly sad look. After the sketch layer, I'm continuing with color this time on a new separate layer below the sketch. I choose a middle tone, a pink tone, which I used to fill in the outline of his face. As you can see, I overlap the parts so that I don't have empty spaces without color later on. Oh With a more saturated red, I'm marking the shadow areas of his skin. Below the cap, the eyes, the wrinkles, and the eyebacks, below the nose, the lips, ears, and the neck. I use a fairly big brush size. Details or working exactly or clean isn't important at this stage. We just want to build up the color and slowly understand the form of the portrait we are painting. I move on to the cap and fill it with a darker blue green color. You can see that my colors are somewhat more saturated than in the reference image because I want them to be more colorful. But I will be bringing the saturation slightly down later on when I will be adding lighter colors. I also choose a slightly greener tone than in the reference image because I think it would look great with redder tones of his face. Playing around that way with color accentuate and slightly switching up to hues can be a very good exercise in color theory as well. I fill in the shirt with the same color and use the direction of the brushstrokes to help me create some textured lights. With a darker color, in this case, a dark green, I'm adding the shadows on the clothing. You can see the darkest spots are below the color on the cap and in the folds of the shirt. We are building up the values of the underpainting, so to say, before we move into more value and color variety. I now switch back to the face and start defining the lighter skin patches. Those are the temples, the nose, and the folds on his cheek. I just lay the color down trying to follow the direction of the face. You can imagine it as if you were working on a sculpture, following with your hands the planes of the face to create them. I try to do the same with the brush, rotating my hand as well as the canvas is needed. I think the wrinkles are what makes his face so interesting and unique, as they give him so much character. With a dark red, I start marking the darkest part of his face. Since we still have the sketch layer on top of a color layer, you can see how saturated the red is as it's slightly overlapping with the sketch I did before, but I will be removing the sketch layer later. I jump all over the image when I paint because I prefer working on the whole canvas at the same time. So the level of progress is similar all over the image. Since our light source is mostly from the top right, I'm adding some shadow below his cap, which covers parts of his forehead. It also stretches more towards the left. In this case, his right side. I also correct the outline of his face and use the moment to add some shadows below his lip and nose. The outlines we established in the sketch layer aren't rules. They are just suggestions. Feel free to correct and change them during the painting process at any time. It's our portrait, our painting, and we are free to create whatever we want in here. I now feel confident enough in the established painting that I can turn off the sketch layer to focus just on the color. I now color pick the color from the image directly and start working out smaller details. In this case, the bridge of the nose on his right side needs some more shadow, as does the general right side of his face. I purposefully choose brighter, more saturated colors when I'm painting than the reference. See it as a kind of a natural filtration system. I use my eyes and my brain to filter and it the colors from what I see to what I want to produce in my painting, making the version of reality uniquely mine. I'm constantly laying color. In this case, the darker shade on each part that still needs some shadows, such as below the nose, the ear, and the ear lobe, as well as below the chin on the neck. I create a color base for the beard, but also add darker red there as well. Later, I will be adding lighter parts on top, and you will still be able to see some of the darker red shining through the beard. I darken the eyes, and then with the lighter color, I add back the lighter colours on the eyelids and the wrinkles. You can add so much texture just by the way you use your brush. You don't even need any of the fancy texture brushes for that. By cross hatching the lines with my brush, I show the rough texture of the skin. The left side of his face needs some darker tones to make it look more three dimensional. So I add them with a brownish color, again, with rough lines. We don't want to fill it too smoothly. It will just look flat if we do. I define the ear a bit more showing the form and how the shadows wrap inside. I really enjoy painting wrinkles. I think they make people look so unique and beautiful, and this gentleman isn't an exception. When I paint the eyes, I try to focus on the values rather than on the structure of the eye. As you can see, I first mark with a dark tone the overall placement of the eyes and later added the eyelids with a lighter color. To paint the white of the eyes, I use a bluish gray color like the background and softly add a bit of lightness on the corners of the eyes. As I often mentioned in my previous classes, the whites of the eyes isn't actually white. And since we have so much shadow falling on it, in our case, it's even darker. With an eraser, I define the ear and the cheek outline. I use a semi hard round brush as an eraser, but you can even use the same brush you're painting with erase if you like more texture. He has some great rim lights coming from the left in the form of cold blue light, maybe the skylight. I choose that color and start putting it on top of all the forms of his face, the ear, the temple, a bit under the eye, and the fold from his nose and the nose itself. Some of it is also falling on his chin and beard. Here you can have so much fun with that, defining all the structure of his face. To paint the hair, I use a base undercolor for the beard. In this case, a bluish gray will look red, and I add it without much pressure, so we still can see some of the redness shining through. On top, I layer gray with small brushstrokes, imitating the growth direction of the hair and beard. I usually go from bigger brush size to a smaller After having added the bigger masses of color, I switch to a smaller brush size to add smaller hairs that catch the light and accentuate the texture of the beard. His beard hair is rougher than the hair on his head, and I want to accentuate with sharper, well defined yet small brushstrokes. On the head, I leave the hair softer without that much contrast between the hair strands, which shows that it's less rough and wild. Let's shed some light on the clothing. I color pick the base color of the cap, and starting from there, I move the point on the color wheel to choose a lighter color. I use a directional brushstrokes to accentuate the pattern on the cap and also add the color where the light catches the folds on top. I do the same with the shirt. Here we have to work out the color. It's striped, which presents a great opportunity to add the highlights in the form of stripes, adding light and texture at the same time. Do Now, I color pick the dark green to paint his eyes. I think it will look great with the contrast of his skin, which is reddish. I also start going more into detail to mark the nose and the eyes. I pay attention to the form that Shadows makes under his nose. When painting a study from reference, it's always about abstraction and filtering. We have so much information on the reference image. Which of it are we going to take into our own painting, and which of it are we going to ignore? I pay attention to the deep creases of his eyes. The wrinkles alone create so much rhythm in the portrait. At this stage of the study, I just play around. I'm all over the image and see what little areas I can improve. I correct lights here and there or add more wrinkles. I mostly only color pick the colors from the image, which I have established at the beginning. I add some more shadows on his forehead from the cap and also on the neck to show more depth. With time, I learned to see what parts need to be worked on while painting. For example, when adding the highlights on the neck, I saw that the shirt next to it can use some darker shadows. I add soft highlights to the eye, even though they aren't that visible on the reference photo, but it never fails to make the portrait look more alive. I also add some gibberish text from the cap to add some smaller details into the painting and also work out some smaller details on his ear, as I feel it's still a bit too undefined. With a lighter color, I add some highlights to the shirt. To accentuate the stripe pattern, I'd like to do it by sketching some simple lines on the color. Mm. In this portrait, I decided to work on the background a bit more. On a new layer above the background, I raise the size of my brush and paint some simple gradients. Since we added some rim lines on the left side of the face, I love to make that particular part of the background darker to make his face stand out better against the background. You can be creative with the background. I love playing around with different color variations and brushstrokes directions to see what look I can achieve, but I tend to keep them fairly simple, especially for quick portrait studies like this one. I now want to add some final details to this portrait. I start with lighter highlights on the cap. I also add some highlights to his nose. I want to put the focus on the area around his nose, so I add some more light and shadow variations in that area and work out the folds more. I felt it wasn't three dimensional enough, so I work on the sphere of his nose dip, adding some soft shadows on the lower part. I also add some darker shadows on the shirt and some little bits of color here and there. I insinuate the buttons of his shirt with a simple color and add some more stripes where as he fit. As you can see, the colors of my portrait are slightly different from the reference image. Like the idea of shifting them towards more red green, which I think gives a beautiful complimentary contrast to the image. This one was fun. We could continue working on it for a while or until we achieve more realism, but that's not the goal of the study. I purposefully kept it under half an hour to put a timer's strain on myself and force myself to focus on what really matters. And that's it. Now it's time for you to choose a reference image and have fun painting a rough portrait. Don't forget to upload your studies in the project section and feel free to ask me any questions you might have. Answer to each and every one. 7. Final Words: Congratulations on finishing this class. I hope you learned something new today, and most importantly, I hope you had fun with today's class. To quickly recap what we learned today. We discussed different ways to make studies and the importance of art studies for improving your art skills. We talked about the fact that a great way to improve quickly is to focus on a specific area of interest when making photo studies. Later, we talked about the importance of photo references and that for portrait studies, having a good, naturally lit photo of decent resolution can greatly impact the whole photo study. Later, I walked you through two of my painting demos where I showed you how I focus on color and expressive brushwork. Now it's your turn. Choose a reference image from the Pinterest board I added or use your own and create a fun Expressive Portrait study and upload it to the project section. Seeing your work always makes me very happy, and I give feedback to each of my students. If you're interested in learning about other topics such as values, black and white portraits or characters, feel free to check out my other classes here on Skillshare. Also, if you enjoyed this class, I would really appreciate it if you could leave me a review. It really helps me out as a teacher. I can't wait to see all of your portrait studies. Thank you for joining my class and happy painting.