Jared Ailstock is a portrait artist from New York. He has created many awesome artworks during his career, but one of his recent projects, where he used watercolor as the main medium, caught our attention. We just had to learn more about it so we managed to get in touch with him and ask some questions about his technique and process. In this blog post you will find useful information regarding watercolor as the main medium in portrait painting. Have a look!
Introduction to Jared Ailstock
Jared Ailstock is an artist from New York. He is known for his large-scale portraits painted in a realistic style using watercolors. His work has been featured in The New York Times, on NBC’s Today Show, and in The Washington Post. Since 2014, Ailstock has been donating a portrait each month to a charity that donates art to children’s hospitals. He donates the proceeds from each portrait to the hospital that receives the painting.
Watercolor as the Main Medium in Portrait Paintings
Jared Ailstock decided to use watercolors as the main medium for his portraits. In his first series of portrait paintings, he was inspired by the palette of cool blues, greens, and violets found in the fall season, so he decided to create portraits of people wearing blue clothing. Jared has been interested in watercolors for a long time and has experimented with the medium a lot. He had used watercolors on a few of his previous projects and even dedicated an entire series to watercolors. He believes that watercolors are a valuable medium, especially for portrait paintings. He says that watercolors are very forgiving, that they can easily be reworked, and that they are not as time consuming as acrylics.
Color Choices When Using Watercolor as the Main Medium
While painting with watercolors, the color choices you make are very important. The right color choices will help your painting look more realistic, while bad color choices will make your painting look too bright and cartoonish.
Jared uses a combination of warm and cool colors while painting with watercolors. He says that warm colors are generally used on the face and cool colors are usually used on the background. He had also used a neutral color blue for the clothes of the people in his paintings. In this case, blues, greens, and violets had been Jared’s main color palette because he had been inspired by the color palette found in the fall season. Jared had also used neutral colors for the skin of the people in his paintings.
Conclusion
Watercolors are a valuable medium and can be really helpful when painting portraits. They are easy to transport, they can be done in a smaller scale, and they are not as time consuming as acrylics. They are ideal for plein air painting, and they can be reworked easily. That’s why talented portrait painter Jared Ailstock uses watercolors as the main medium for his portraits.
Originally published at jaredailstock.wordpress.com on June 2, 2022.