Look on the Internet for examples of work that is more than simply physical likeness but convey a distinctive mood or atmosphere. Example given are Picasso’s blue paintings due to there mood of surreal sadness, Van Gogh’s dark dirty paintings such as the Potato eaters. Rembrandt’s portraits convey an essence of a persons mood. The Fauve painters with the strong colour contrast and the German Expressionists.
https://uploads7.wikiart.org/images/rembrandt/self-portrait-1658.jpg
Self Portrait with Lowered Head – Egon Schiele
https://www.wikiart.org/en/edvard-munch
Gustave Courbet The Desperate Man (Self-Portrait
Julian Opie (‘Julian with T-shirt’), self-portrait, 2005
https://g.co/kgs/7zcFya Kees Van Dongen 1877-1968
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/drink-fuelled-nations-art
Toulouse Lautrecs Absinthe Lady
The worst thing about the interest is trying to find authentic work and citation that is able to reference this work to guarantee its originality. That is why I haven’t be able to find all the images on line that I wanted to research.
WEEPING WOMEN 1937 BY Picasso
The Ironer by Picasso
The Potato Eaters by Van Gogh
Rembrandt self portrait in his latter years.
William De Kooning self Portrait.
Edvard Munch- The Madonna or the Brooch Or Birgitta.
Jackson Pollock self Portrait
Kees Van Dongen- Femmes a chapeau
Mood and Atmosphere conveyed in portraits can be depicted via colour and to have colour you need light. The context and the gesturing add to the mood but the basic foundation needed is Light. John Singer Sargent, Lantern paintings all depict a mood of celebration and soft colours and feathery painting explains softness and delicacy so the paint application and the composition can express mood and atmosphere. Painting children can be bland, dull as no lines or wrinkles to focus on and the skin tone can be tonally plain compared to the story a weather beaten face can tell. The artist can either express this lines , wrinkle,features with the add of artistic licence or concentrate on the light definition which defines the facial features and create a mood with colour, brush strokes, composition, all the principals that help to create an image.
MelindaW POP (pratice of painting) 
