New portrait painting - Day 1

I've started a new portrait painting at Stamford Arts Centre. I turned up late and no easels were available, so I had to sit down on a donkey (an art class donkey not an hee-haw one). As it turned out this was actually a benefit since (1) I could choose my position in front of the easels (2) I was closer to the model and (3) I was looking up at the model which (as photographers know) is best for portraits. This is a lesson in being late.

I had pre-prepared my canvas with brown acrylic paint. I chose to do a head and shoulders view and spent the first 45 mins doing a charcoal drawing. Sometimes portraits seem to work from the start and this one did. The model had a slight head tilt upwards and a slightly amused semi-smile. When drawing heads at an angle the tendency is to 'straighten' them, so maybe I underplayed the tilt, but at least I was aware of this.

After the break I dusted the charcoal down (carefully) to try and minimise mixing charcoal with paint. I premixed tints on my pallete, from memory using raw umber/white, burnt sienna/white, raw ochre/white mixtures as well as putting white, black, red and burnt umber on my pallete. Using flat brushes I found the lights first, looking for yellow, red and neutral tints. Then I moved to the darks and finally the mid-tones. Towards the end I wanted more darks, but my palette had become cluttered with white, so I mixed burnt umber with black and used this. This was a bit of a mistake - normally I would have used burnt umber and ultramarine, but I hadn't put the latter on my pallette. The result is a blackness in areas, which is not usually recommended. Nevertheless I'm sure Lucien Freud used black and it didn't do him any harm. It's not too late to sort things out.


Looking at the painting in the cold light of day it's a good start. I didn't take any photos so I'm going to leave until the next session (I might put in a rough background). I think the cheek could go darker. When painting a dark area it is easy to convince yourself that it is lighter because your eyes adjust to the local area rather than the overall picture. The way to judge is to screw up your eyes and look at the whole thing. This brings out the relative tonal areas rather than details or colour.