Painting Luminous Portraits for Artists: An Essential Guide to Painting Facial Features, Fleshtones, Light, and Form -- Steve Forster, Paperback

The complete guide to painting the portrait in oils.

From Steve Forster, award-winning portrait artist and co-director of the Long Island Academy of Fine Art, Painting Luminous Portraits for Artists presents essential lessons on how to paint a radiant likeness in oils in ten comprehensive chapters, each with skill-building exercises and QR codes to instructional videos:

• Discover fundamental materials, techniques, and basic anatomy and feature development for creating an underdrawing.
• Explore color theory and color palette structures.
• Learn painting techniques, including different shape and lighting approaches.
• Consider creative strategies for portraits.
• See how digital painting techniques can be used to support and enhance traditional painting techniques.

Perfect for artists at all skill levels who want to explore capturing form and light through realistic painting techniques, Painting Luminous Portraits for Artists shows you how to capture the human portrait from a diverse range of perspectives, flesh tones, and light effects.

The For Artists series expertly guides and instructs artists at all skill levels who want to develop their classical drawing and painting skills and create realistic and representational art.

Also available from the series: Drawing the Head for Artists, Essential Human Anatomy for Artists, Figure Drawing for Artists, Life Drawing for Artists, Drawing and Painting Botanicals for Artists, Dynamic Still Life for Artists, Facial Expressions for Artists, Landscape Painter's Workbook, Plein Air Techniques for Artists, and Sketching Techniques for Artists.

Author: Steve Forster
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Published: 08/26/2025
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.43lbs
Size: 11.00h x 8.50w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780760395622

About the Author

Award-winning artist Steve Forster received his MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art (NYAA), and also attended the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, where he met his wife, Rebecca. Since 2014 Steve and Rebecca have been Co-Directors of the Long Island Academy of Fine Art (LIAFA) in Glen Cove, New York. He currently teaches painting at LIAFA and previously taught painting at NYAA for almost 15 years. Steve blends digital painting and a love of traditional media to create unique contemporary portrait stories. His paintings are regularly exhibited in solo and group shows nationally. Steve was born in Boston, spent most of his life in central Florida, and now lives in Glen Cove, New York. Steve and Rebecca have three kids, Elijah, Evie, and William.

steveforster.net
Instagram: @steverforsterpaintings
Long Island Academy of Fine Art: liafa.com

The work of artist and teacher Stephen Bauman focuses on the human figure. He has given drawing and painting workshops and demonstrations at various institutions throughout the United States and Europe, including the Long Island Academy of Art in New York, the Art Florida Academy in Miami, and at all three campuses of the Florence Academy of Art, in Sweden, Italy, and the U.S. Bauman's work, which has been exhibited and collected in the U.S., Europe, and China, received first place in the Imaginative Realism category of the 2014-2015 Art Renewal Center Salon, as well as a purchase prize for his painting When I Was Young, which was also featured on the cover of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine in which he was profiled. His work has also been featured in numerous other publications, such as Lessons in Classical Drawing and Figure Drawing Atelier by Juliette Aristides. He lives in Florence, Italy.