Painting a Loose, Atmospheric Watercolor Portrait: Sea Captain on a Smoke Break
Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and today I'm tackling something that still challenges me: loose portrait painting. I'm working on a 4x6 piece of hot press watercolor paper, painting a sea captain on a smoke break, and using the gorgeous Schmincke Ultra Granulating Tundra Set. This is going to be loose, atmospheric, and dare I say, even abstract—exactly the kind of portrait work I need to practice.
Why Mini Paintings? The Holiday Season Connection
Before I dive into technique, let me explain why I'm painting at this smaller 4x6 size. It's the holiday season, which means it's mini painting season in the art world!
Galleries are doing their mini art shows right now because it's gift-giving time. And let's be real—you're not going to gift someone a giant 36x48 painting. (Though if you have that in your gift budget and need someone to paint something huge for you, reach out to me!)
Small paintings are:
Easy to gift without breaking the bank
A great introduction for people who want to collect original art
An accessible price point that lowers the barrier to entry for supporting artists
I know what things are like right now—I've got to buy groceries, and I'm pretty sure you eat too. But small original artworks let people start adding unique pieces to their homes while still supporting working artists. It's a win-win.
The Schmincke Ultra Granulating Tundra Set
I love these colors a lot, but I'll confess something silly: I don't usually use them together because I keep them all in their box, so I don't see them all the time. Plus, the tubes are small and I sometimes fall into that unhelpful mindset of "Oh, but I want to save these paints. I don't want to waste them."
So I'm once again breaking that unhelpful thought process by pulling them out and actually using them.
The colors I'm working with today are:
Tundra Violet – One of my go-tos from the set; I'm using it for hair, hat, and coat
Tundra Orange – I love this one so much I've squeezed it into one of my regular palettes; when it splits, you can see bits of pink, which is perfect for skin tones
Tundra Pink – A cooler pink that I'm using for shadows on the face
Tundra Blue – For additional cool tones in clothing and hair
All of these paints work really well together. Because they're ultra granulating, they split and give lovely textures, but also shifts in color. It's like getting multiple colors from one pigment, which is perfect for this kind of atmospheric work.
My Struggle with Loose Portraits
Here's my honest confession: I hesitate with painting people so often because I have something in my head that I want, but I tend to get too detailed. I want to make it look too much like a person, and that perfectionism kills the loose, dreamy quality I'm actually after.
My goal for this piece was to keep it really loose—like you're seeing someone through a mist, or trying to recall a dream where you've got the pieces and they kind of form together, but it's not a clear image.
Even though this is almost like an abstract realism piece, I do want to honor what a person looks like. But because this is so small and I want to capture just the feeling of it, I can't get into a lot of detail.
Building the Portrait: Color Choices and Placement
I started with the tundra violet for most of the foundational work, then moved into the tundra pink for the face. The pink is a cooler pink, so I'm using it for shadows on the skin. Even though these warmer colors are technically cooler on the color scale, they're warmer compared to the purples and blues I'm using elsewhere—and they look more alive than adding blue would.
Because this is a person, that matters. I want it to feel human, not cold or lifeless.
The Importance of Cool vs. Warm
I'm using cooler colors like purple and blue for the hair, hat, and coat. This creates a natural separation between the figure's clothing and face without needing hard edges or tons of detail. The temperature of the colors does a lot of the heavy lifting for me.
Intentional Brush Work: Using Every Part of Your Brush
When you're painting, pay attention to how you're moving your brush. Use all the directions and parts of your brush:
Use the tip for fine details
Use the belly for larger washes
Use the heel for unique marks
But do it intentionally. Ask yourself:
Do you need a strong line? Then use straight brush strokes
Want something soft, almost fuzzy? Use short strokes in curved or circular motions
For the beard, I used lots of short strokes and wiggled my brush. I didn't want anything to be very linear. But up on the hat, I used directional brush strokes because that's a knit cap—it has ribbing in it. The directional brushwork helps suggest that texture without painting every single detail.
Leaving Areas Unpainted: Illustrating Light
Notice on the forehead of the person I'm painting—there's an entire section I left unpainted. I did that on purpose.
I'm trying to concentrate on leaving some pieces unpainted, sections that are almost drowned out by light. That's another technique I love seeing in art, but I sometimes have trouble with when painting people. So lately when I've been painting, I've been focusing on intentionally leaving sections out to illustrate that they're being hit by strong light.
This is especially effective in loose paintings because it reinforces that dreamy, atmospheric quality.
Creating Atmosphere: Bleeding Edges
Because this is a loose, atmospheric painting, I've bled away some of the image on the sides. I'm softening edges, letting paint bleed and drip.
I don't want to just have a person painted loose against a plain white background. By bleeding some of that away, by softening edges, it gives a misty, dreamy look without me actually having to paint a background. It creates connection and that sense of living by the sea—everything flowing together.
The Technical Challenges: Clothing Folds and Hands
When I paint clothes, I typically paint in the folds first. The folds are going to be the part with the strongest value—that's where the shadows are. Then I go in with water and soften the areas around it to create the rest of the fabric.
My challenge with this piece was differentiating the shoulder and upper arm from the forearm. He's lifting his arm to put his hand near his face to take a puff from his cigarette. The fabric folds on both parts of the arm go in the same direction, which makes them harder to separate.
One of the easiest ways to work with fabric is to make the folds go in different directions—that usually helps illustrate where a body part is in space and where it's bending. But when they're both folded in the same direction? That's trickier.
And Then There's Hands
Good Lord, painting hands can be a trick.
What made this one weird is I had a reference image to get my proportions correct, but the sleeve was doing something that made sense when I looked at it, but when I tried to paint it, it made the hand look too small for the rest of the face.
I struggled with that idea I preach about all the time: paint what you see, not what you think you see.
We typically get hung up on "this is what an eye looks like, this is what a nose looks like, this is what hands look like," and then we overcomplicate things. It ends up calling attention to the area in a way that isn't very good. What I was seeing and what I thought I saw weren't connecting in my brain, and I definitely struggled with that.
Because this is loose and atmospheric, I kept the hand minimal. I only painted part of the hand before putting in the fingers, using a lifting technique. I didn't want it to be super detailed—it would be weird to have a face with no features but then a super detailed hand. By keeping things loose and using a lifting technique, it also meant that if I wanted to correct something later, corrections would be easier.
Working Wet: Letting Colors Fuse
Everything was still really wet as I worked. I let the beard bleed into the shoulder. I let the hat drip down and bleed into the shoulder. I wanted that sense of connection—I don't know, living by the sea, having all of that go together just works for me.
At one point I realized, "Oh, I haven't added any blue yet," and I like things to fuse while they're wet. So I went into my tundra blue and started adding that in, letting it mix and mingle with the other colors still damp on the paper.
Creating Differentiation Through Value
How do you create differentiation between similar elements? Increase the value somewhere. Make a part darker.
I needed to separate the hat from the facial hair, so I chose to make the hat darker. That contrast helps your eye understand that these are two different elements.
But here's the important part: I need to be careful about making certain areas too dark. If I make one area super dark and everything else is light and atmospheric, then I'm off balance.
Understanding High Key and Low Key
Pay attention to your lights and darks. You do need them—having a nice hit of dark value somewhere can make your light pop—but you want it to be consistent through the composition.
This is where understanding high key and low key paintings helps:
High key painting has a lot of white, a lot of light value. That doesn't mean don't use darks; it just means you'll use fewer of them.
Low key painting has a lot of dark, and you use your light values to bring out the highlights.
This sea captain portrait would be a high key painting. Most of my values are light—it's overall a light painting—but I've got those few hits of dark: the sleeve, areas of the hat, that one spot where the eyebrow meets the nose. Just a few areas so that it's not washy or washed out.
The Details: Cigarette and Final Touches
For the cigarette, I had white-on-white to deal with. The cigarette itself is white, so I used some tundra violet for the ashy end where it's burning. I also pulled some of that violet to darken the eyebrow area—I wanted to pull color I had elsewhere in the composition into the skin area of the face to create unity.
I went back to differentiate parts of the arm by going darker in some areas, then bringing up some tundra violet into the facial hair to tie everything together.
The Brush I'm Using (Or: You Don't Need More Brushes)
I don't even know exactly what brush I'm using based on the video. I think it's just a synthetic round brush I bought on a whim last year but never really used. In fact, one of those brushes from that set is still capped.
Take that as a lesson: don't get too distracted wanting to buy more brushes. You probably don't need them. You'll probably go for the same brushes over and over. Then you'll realize you bought more brushes and pull them out because you're like, "Oh man, I really need to use these to justify the purchase."
Sound familiar?
The Reality of Painting: It Never Looks Like What's in Your Head
I want to point out something important: I don't think any painting I've ever done ever looks the way it looks in my brain.
My brain is what gets me started. It gets me excited. But whatever I end up painting? I don't think it ever turns out the same. Better or worse, I wouldn't even say either of those. It just never turns out the same.
Part of that is because watercolor is almost alive. It varies based on:
Water content
The paper you use
Your brush strokes
How hot or cold it is in your room
Your climate
So part of what's great about watercolor is it makes me go with the flow. (Pun wasn't intended there, but you know what, let's keep that in. Let's keep that pun.)
Learning Never Stops
A lot of this ends up being intuitive. I try to explain things the best I can, but as I'm painting, I just sort of go, "Eh, let's try this. Let's do that." That's how people end up with their own painting styles.
We all might be working from the same set of guidelines or rules, but sometimes things just look a certain way to you.
If you want to paint loose portraits and you're having trouble, just keep going. You'll learn a little bit every time, and you won't get it right every time. I don't get it right every time.
Heck, what is even "getting it right"? If you learn something by the end of it, I think that's a great success.
Where to See This Painting
This piece was accepted into Ghost Gallery's show in Seattle! The show runs from mid-November through January, and this piece will be framed and matted. If you're interested in purchasing it, reach out to Ghost Gallery. If you need contact information, just leave me a comment and I'll get that to you.
Final Thoughts: Embrace the Process
I sped this video up, but only a little bit—about 136%. I wanted to keep it slow enough that you could see what I'm doing, but not so slow that you get too bored.
The truth is, I took this slowly and intentionally. Even when working loose and atmospheric, there's thought behind every choice. It's not chaos—it's controlled looseness, if that makes sense.
So if you're struggling with portraits, with looseness, with letting go of control—I'm right there with you. But every painting teaches me something, and even the challenging ones (especially the challenging ones) move me forward.