As I see it, composition, value, color and likeness are the four essentials in "building" any successful portrait. Each has its own importance, but oftentimes too much emphasis is placed on one or two elements, such as color and likeness, with little regard for the other two, composition and value. Yet these four cornerstones of portrait painting are nothing new, and these four points are what got us to the point we are as artists. If we don't fall back on those basics, our work will suffer.

When we consider these four elements—composition, value, color and likeness——we do so from two very different perspectives, one being technical, the other emotional. By technical I mean the pure mechanics of painting a portrait, such as mixing paints, making sure we get the proper proportions, adjusting the light on the subject, and so on. By emotional I mean the reason for making an artistic decision and how our passion for painting can affect the process as well as the outcome of the painting. And these two overlap quite often. If we break down the technical and emotional into the four components I have just mentioned, it will help us evaluate and understand our own work as well as others'. And until we learn to dissect and critique our own work through this process, it will be pointless to attempt to understand someone else's art.

As I talk about composition, value, color and likeness, I will do so not in order of their importance to a portrait but in the order which they are used in building a portrait.

When considering a portrait and before any brushstroke is made I first consider composition. What exactly is composition? According to Webster, the word composition means "putting together a whole by combining parts" or an "arrangement of the parts of a work of art so as to form a unified, harmonious whole." I see composition as the stabilizer. It is the glue that holds the painting together. It is the abstract design of the largest shapes, the direction of angles, all of which are arranged or at the least considered by the artist.

The composition in a painting should never be forced or compromised due to the size of the canvas or the area where it will finally be hung. Instead, the canvas size needs to be selected to work around and enhance the composition. Remember, planning the composition begins before ever starting to paint. A composition can evoke a sense of calm, order and balance or confusion, disorder and lack of balance. We as artists should have control of these sensations within the boundaries of the canvas.

When painting portraits the composition can and should be created by posing the sitter, then cropping that image when one begins to paint. I find posing the sitter to be an art form in itself. To me it's like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together, except that there are countless ways of making it fit. When posing the subject, we should consider a number of things, not the least of which are the subject's age, gender, personality, and whether or not the portrait will be formal or informal. . .the whole mood of the situation. And it's hard creating a fresh, new pose every time, especially when painting a head and shoulders portrait, since there are fewer options than with a full-length. The mood of the piece will be determined by whether the sitter is looking straight at us or turned away.
Of course we can change a head and shoulders pose by simply turning the subject's head or dropping a shoulder, but it usually becomes more complex as we include more of the figure. That's not to say that a subject can't just happen to "fall" into the perfect pose without being aware of it, and this often happens. We as artists should observe the sitter's natural posture, then pose him or her accordingly.

Typically, but not always, for a portrait, the "weight" of a composition needs to be near the lower 1/3 of the painting. This could occur with the use of props such as a desk or chair, or could occur naturally when a person sits, spreading his weight with his legs and arms, such as in a full-length portrait. When painting a head and shoulders portrait, this happens naturally with the shoulders. The compositional weight feels comfortable, or as Webster put it, "harmonious."
Earlier this year I did a portrait commission of a brother and sister, both teenagers. When dealing with two subjects in the same composition, I wanted the subjects to feel and look natural, relaxed and comfortable. I seated and reseated them. I moved them back and forth from the arm of the chair to the seat. Every aspect is observed and then fine-tuned. But still there is a fine line we walk as artists between controlling the pose and letting it happen naturally.

An artist needs to consider the age of the subjects when deciding the pose. Excluding two-year olds, there is no tougher assignment than painting teenagers. Often they are uncertain about the changes going on in their own lives and uncomfortable about the whole idea of having their portrait painted. They are no longer kids, yet they aren't quite grown up either. So making them comfortable with themselves is key to creating a comfortable composition.

I don't leave anything to chance but do allow chance to happen. In other words, often the best poses are the ones the sitter strikes at a break in the photo shoot. These are the ones I'm looking for, when their guard is down. It's more a gut feeling when everything seems right, seems balanced, appears solid and exciting at the same time.

Try painting an abstract and you'll soon learn just how important composition is. It's quite a challenge to make a painting interesting with no recognizable imagery, such as a chair, vase, flowers or whatever.

Leaving edges out and leaving shading unfinished is another tool for editing that affects composition. It's the difference between a stagnant painting and one that flows. I put so much emphasis on composition because I often see that it's the weakest part of artists' work today. We put so much effort into painting a likeness that we often overlook balancing the piece.

Next we need should consider value. Webster defines value as: the degree of lightness or darkness in a color, or the relation of light and shade, as in a drawing. And the word tone he defines as: a quality of color with reference to the degree of absorption or reflection of light; or shade. He also adds that tone is a slight modification of a given color or hue. And finally he defines the word shade as: the dark part of a picture especially as representing the absence of illumination. These all sound pretty much the same, but I'll use the word value in a more general way here.

Though it cannot stand on its own, value is possibly the most influential of these four elements because it directly affects composition and likeness. Value affects composition by creating a focal point. Lights and darks can be used to shift the weight of the composition as well. But value in a more delicate way is what defines the form of the face, clothing and background and is, of course, the result of light striking a surface at varying intensities. So, through painting, if one recreates the resulting image, one will paint a relative likeness. And as we all know, if one re-positions the light source, making the light either flat or dramatic, it changes the way one views that same subject, though the subject hasn't moved. The most dramatic light and value one could achieve would be to illuminate the sitter with a single bulb in an otherwise dark room with no windows. This would be the most extreme value range. But this type of dramatic difference in value may not be what we want in a commissioned portrait. So we as artists seek a studio where north light filters down evenly on the palette, easel, subject and everything else. But often we find this to be not dramatic enough, so to achieve a pleasant range of values one could light the subject from the opposite side of the north light source with a single bulb, thus having two light sources, one natural and one artificial.

We can use value to our advantage with two very different results. By increasing the value range in a painting we can accentuate the hair. On the other hand we can reduce a painting's value range by intentionally making the background and subject very close in value. Both methods work, depending on your intent.

Let's deal with color, though it seems everything in the world has already been written about color. My own feelings about color in a painting is that its importance is often over-estimated. Not because it's unimportant, but just the opposite. It is so important. And its emotional appeal can't be overlooked.

Often that emotional appeal can be so strong that it outweighs every other component in a painting. Color can be compared to a physical attraction for another person, in that it is hard to explain that attraction. Color evokes an emotional reaction that draws or repels. Color has a way of tempting us to use more than we maybe should. There is a passionate sense about color that once squeezed onto our palettes it dares us to use it. And to know when, where, and how much, as well as which color to use is tough. But it's something we need to focus on because in a portrait it's the life of the whole thing.

Color sets the mood. The subtle hues "breathe life" on the canvas, whereas the values hold it together. Color is the most personal of all the elements that embody a painting, yet color is the most misunderstood. Unfortunately, color is the one thing that causes people to admire an otherwise flawed painting. And the problem we face as artists is that we often rely on color to work in place of value, yet we should use color to enhance value.

Choosing colors is such a personal decision. It reflects an artist's style as does his or her use of brushstroke or texture. Much like detail, I rarely think much about color in the early stages of a portrait, it just evolves. Which is why I never show a color sketch to my clients but only a black and white sketch, because I don't want the restrictions of being bound to my own initial thoughts on color.

Although the color that I place on my canvas is in my complete control, it is amazing that there are still surprises each time I paint and I never cease to be amazed by it. Something I look for and love to paint is the difference in skin tones from one part of the body to another. There's a difference between the chest area and the shoulders and face. The "fleshy" cool light skin of the chest calls for a different mix of paints than does the face. The ears, nose and cheeks are often painted with warmer colors since they receive more blood circulating near the surface of the skin than do many other areas.

An artist's palette tells a lot about his or her personality. I often describe my palette as controlled chaos, which sums up the way I am. The amount of paint, the order it's arranged, the color selection, all relate to how an artist will apply it to the canvas. An artist's palette is usually more honest than what he is painting, mine included. What I mean is, the chances that I take, the texture that develops, and the rich, thick color that has been pushed around my palette only serve to remind me of just how timid I become somewhere in between my palette and my canvas. I envy those artists who apply paint to their canvas like they are making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I can do that in the background of a portrait but often whimp out somewhere in the face.
It is important to me when mixing paint to not always completely mix the paint, but to simply drag one color through another, making the resulting brushstroke not so purely one color but a combination of closely "woven" colors. Oftentimes we find the need to push color to its extreme, while other times we want subtle variations of cools and warms. The difference is knowing when to do one or the other.

Finally I will mention likeness. Likeness, in its most basic state, is directly related to value as noted earlier, but is the result of keen observation. In every attempt to achieve a likeness one must draw and redraw. The secret is not to dedicate one's self to any one line or mark, but each new mark should gain greater importance as you work through the painting. In building a likeness, every mark relates to all the others made so far, but more importantly they relate to the marks about to be made. Each stroke of the brush serves a dual purpose. Each is an edit as well as a commitment. An artist edits a mark that was previously not exactly right since no mark should feel carved in stone. On the other hand, the commitment is that every mark should be made with confidence and boldness, as if no other mark would suffice, while at the same time knowing that it might fade away and may appear meaningless by the time the painting is complete.

Likeness is also that part of a portrait that can be made or ruined with one or two strokes of the brush. Likeness is that fleeting image that can begin to appear on the canvas only to disappear the next morning when an artist re-enters his or her studio. Likeness is that ever elusive element that portrait artists lose sleep over. It is that magical moment when "capturing" it, that everything else on the canvas seems to fall into place. Likeness is the most critical element of a portrait, yet too much emphasis and time can be placed on it. Since a portrait should be much more than a likeness of the sitter we should not become satisfied with obtaining just a good likeness. After all, most of us can simply copy an image, especially while relying on photography as our starting point. So likeness may indeed be the least of our problems. Perhaps the problem is everything else. Likeness has little to do with detail, but has everything to do with form. We think that the more detail we put in a portrait the more it will resemble that person. Ironically, often the more detail we paint, the more our mistakes stand out. Study the way Sargent painted hands, eyes, hair, a vase, whatever. It's tough to criticize the way a fingernail is painted if it's not painted at all. With one brush stoke Sargent could say more than others could say with 50. When you walk into a museum and see a beautifully painted portrait across the room you don't say, WOW, what an incredible eyelash. No, it's the composition, color, value and overall emotion of the piece that draws you in. And that should be what keeps you there.

Yet many of us consider detail to be an integral part of likeness. One reason that detail kills so many otherwise decent portraits is that most of us don't know when to quit. We simply can't put our brushes down and say, I'm done, that's it, because we can always add one more brush stroke, one more eyelash.

My best work is often the stuff I paint in one single, frantic sitting. And though it may or may not capture a perfect likeness of the sitter, it breathes an honest, gut feeling of the person sitting in the chair. There are so many portraits I've painted that took me weeks, and in hindsight, I wish I had stopped much earlier when the likeness had long since arrived. So when you think you're done with a painting, you probably are.

While a likeness may be achieved in a portrait, that portrait may still fall short of being a success. Why? For one moment think of a camera. The camera rarely fails in capturing a person's likeness, since it merely records information; it doesn't edit or translate the likeness. Yet we have all seen pictures of ourselves and thought "that doesn't look anything like me." We all know that the artist's job is to record much more than likeness. My gut feeling is that this cannot be taught since there is no sure formula for painting a masterpiece. Using these four elements I have mentioned, through both technical and emotional perspectives, will only be a starting point for a successful portrait.

It may take us years to figure out how to balance these four elements along with many others I have not even mentioned. Then we may create the kind of portraits we strive so hard to create.
As artists, this should be our goal each time we are faced with a blank canvas—to anticipate a masterpiece, and to paint with confidence, all the while knowing that the experience of painting, the very act of painting, is equally as valuable as the finished portrait.


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Steve Childs, an art lecturer and instructor, has lived and worked in virtually every part of the nation. He was born in Atlanta, began formal art studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts, received his bachelor's degree in illustration for Georgia State University, master of fine arts degree from Utah State University, and now lives in Kansas. His creative work has been used by numerous publications including Book of the Month Club and ESPN. Childs hails many prominent subjects including Garrison Keillor of National Public Radio, Senior U.S. Judge Richard Erwin as well as hundreds of portraits of governmental, cultural and corporate figures.