New portrait painting - Day 6

Further progress in my step-by-step portrait painting. It may not look like I've done much, but have worked on the necklace, chest, ear and hair. I tend to slow up towards the end. Note these are not full days work, I tend to work in fits and starts. I still need some work on the background and may need to 'oil-out' certain areas that have dried out to make sure they are dark enough. I may try lightening the eyes.

New portrait painting - Day 5

Further work on this step-by-step portrait painting. I am working from two photographs which is a bit tricky. This is now getting closer to the look I want. The thing with portraits is that tiny changes can make a lot of difference as our vision is so attuned to faces. A good tip is to look at the painting in a mirror as this shows up drawing errors. I'm not really sure why. I've also tried varying the background a bit to see if this will work. I think it will. More work to go.

New portrait painting - Day 4

Did some more work on my latest portrait painting. To see the history of this painting click the step-by-step tag at the bottom of this post. This time I worked from photographs as the model sessions have finished. Main thing was to correct the drawing - in particular the far eye (too large) and the neckline (too low) and reduced the sauturation of the background. There's a little too much space around the head (if it was a photo I would crop it slightly). It may be OK when in a frame, or alternatively the canvas could be removed and put on a smaller support (although I've never done this). Other way is to put a bit more interest in the background - maybe just some variation in colour and tone. Still a bit more to do on this - I want to capture some of 'intelligence' of the look in the original drawing.

Pastel portrait

Drew a portrait in conte pastels on 'charcoal' pastelmat paper at the Stamford Arts Centre. Click on image for larger vesrion. All rights reserved.

Nottingham Castle Open 2011 - Preview

Went to the opening of the Nottingham Castle Open 2011 last night. I cast my vote for Jackie Berridge for her paintings of imaginary human/animal hybrid communities . I really liked these.

Very different from my work! (below). The exhibition is on until 6 November 2011.