New portrait painting - Finished

OK it's been a long time since Day 6! I've had a few more sessions on the portrait, but now it's finished. The main work has been on the background, the hair, mouth and eyes. I think it has the intelligent, semi-smile look that I tried to capture in the original drawing. Click image for larger version. To see step-by-step develoment of this painting, choose the step-by-step label below.

I submitted this with other work to the Welland Valley Art Society to support my application for Exhibiting Membership. I have been accepted!

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.

New portrait painting - Day 3

I did another afternoon's work on this portrait at a sitting. I used a pallette with a yellow string and red string. Yellow being lemon yellow, ochre, raw sienna and raw umber. Red being cadmium red, indian red, burnt sienna and burnt umber. Also added white, black and ultramarine. A necklace had appeared and I decided to include this.

I also took a couple of photographs as this was the final sitting. Next thing will be to compare the phto with the painting and see where my drawing is out and then decide what to do about it. I don't want to transform the painting to become the photo, i.e. I want to retain the 'painted from life' feeling as much as possible, however a few changes may provide benefits.

New portrait painting - Day 2

OK I decided to paint the background. I remembered her top was blue and I played with some colour options on the computer and decided on a gold background. Used some white, ochre, green and a transparent red oxide to give a muted yellow/gold colour. I also shaved some hair off the back of the head to emphasize the upwards tilt.

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.

Step-by-step oil painting: Cottesmore Hunt

I'll take you through the stages in a recent oil painting. Unlike the lemons still life example, this painting was worked up from an accurate underdrawing. The painting was based on a photograph of a local hunt taken by the professional photographer Nico Morgan. See Figure 1.

Figure 1. Original photographic image. (c) Nico Morgan

I found this online, however just because it is online does not make it copyright free. In this case there would be no doubt that the painting would be substantially derived from the photograph, and thus the copyright holder for the photograph hold rights to the image. As I also intended to make the painting available for sale I wanted to be clear that there would be no on-going copyright issues. I therefore contacted Nico and asked if he could quote for a license for a one-off original painting - payable prior to release for sale. Nico was very pleased to be asked, as this is not always the case, and quoted a very reasonable one-off payment. I then downloaded a copy of the photograph for reference (using Nico's paid digital download site).

To transfer to canvas I first drew a version in pencil on paper at the size to fit the canvas I was to use (400mm x 600mm). This was guided by a squared-up print of the photograph. Here I decided which things to include or remove - e.g. removing the riders in the background, some of the hounds, and I also moved the hound at the extreme left of the image. Figure 2.

Figure 2. Outline drawing in pencil on paper

The canvas was pre-prepared stretched linen, which I coloured with grey acrylic paint. To transfer the drawing I used tracing paper to trace the drawing on paper, then coated the back with compressed charcoal and retraced over the outlines on to the canvas. The charocal outlines can be seen in Figure 3. I then started to lay in the individual hounds, with relatively simple blocks of colour and tone. Mostly I used the image on my laptop as a reference.

Figure 3. Charcoal outlines on canvas and initial lay-in of hounds.

This lay-in was continued for the hounds, horse and rider. As the initial layers dried more detail could be worked in to the images. Needless to say this took a long time (weeks).

Figure 4. Foreground subjects laid in

The next step was to lay in the road and background. This was done without an underdrawing, with large areas of colour first (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Lay in of road and background

Next I worked up details in the background. As I could not hope to achieve the detail in the photograph, I had to come up with a way of summarising the bushes, leaves, branches etc. This proved problematic and I tried a number of ways of achieving an 'interesting' and yet not dominant background. In the end I decided to paint a lattice of branches at the top of the picture and apply coloured blobs to simulate leaves (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Detail added to background.

At this point I reviewed the overall picture and adjusted contrasts etc. I also added a light gold wash over the road and some of the dogs as the picture had become too cool. Final steps were to work on the face of the huntsman. Figure 7 shows the final painting.

Figure 7. Final Painting: Cottesmore Hunt (Castle Bytham, January 2010).

The painting is framed and for sale in the Backstairs Gallery, Swans of Oakham.

Step by step oil painting: Step 1

I thought I would record progress on a new oil painting as I go along for you good people. To get the subject I set up a still-life in the studio and took photographs. Actually several different set-ups. I then transferred photos to my laptop. I chose what I thought would make a good painting and did some editing in Pixelmator on light levels, cropping, colours etc. I won't show the photo just yet as this would spoil the surprise. I then printed out at the size I wanted (to fit on a 8x10" canvas board).

To transfer to the canvas I traced main shapes from the printout on tracing paper. I covered the back of the tracing paper with compressed charcoal and retraced over the front to leave faint charcoal lines on the canvas. I then painted an underpainting using Acrylic paint. This is really quick and dries almost instantly. It is fine to paint oils over Acrylic and is basically a shortcut. This also means that I have a coloured ground to work on rather than the white canvas. See Figure- Step 1.

Step 1 - Acrylic underpainting

I used a leaf green/yellow/white mix for the lemons (you guessed!) and a grey (black/white mixes!) for everything else. I then added white highlights to the lemons. I plan to glaze over the lemons using transparent oils, so the underpainting needs to be high key (light), as glazing can only darken. Already the painting is taking shape and it would be easy to make big changes (or scrap altogether) at this stage without too much heartache. A trick is to look at the painting from afar. If it already looks good then the general composition and lights/darks are working and you could be on to a winner. I'm happy enough with it. There is sufficient border to take a frame rebate without squeezing the main subject (which is often overlooked when you first start painting). This underpainting could be worked on straight away, but I'm taking a break.

Work in progress: Hay field step 2

A step-by-step record of a new oil painting.

Step2: Colour lay-in using fairly thin oil paints. Work over whole area. Push saturation and contrast. Use transparent paints for darks. Stand back and consider composition. Now is the time to make major changes. Leave to dry and come back with a fresh eye. 

Work in progress: hay field step 1

A step-by-step record of a new oil painting.

Step1: Use acrylic colour ground applied to canvas board (40cm x 40cm). This is a mixture of cyan, white and black. Underdrawing in charcoal. Dusted off (lightly) ready to apply oil paint.