Portrait Process

Here's a sample of the portraiture that's happening in my studio these days. I had great fun painting Lynn on saturday. This young lady is an animated conversationalist and our discussion of some lofty and compelling topics did distract me from my real job of painting. When I find myself pushing the paint around without any thoughts about values, edges or composition it is time to stop everything and reflect before proceeding. That is where we pick up on this painting.

This is my initial block-in. I've established the basic value pattern.(squint down and you'll see it ). As usual I don't worry about exact detail or even likeness. I want to get some paint down so I have something to push around with my next strokes.

A little adjusting to the left eye, the mouth and cheeks and neck.
I decided to introduce Lynn's glasses at this stage. I sometimes leave glasses off until the end to eliminate the need to paint around them. Right or wrong, I tried it differently today. That's the joy of art, you do whatever you want.

More adjustments with a little work into the hair. Lynn had arrived with slightly damp hair but as it dried it became apparent that all those blond curls could easily take over the painting. We were set up with strong, natural light washing in from the left which when it reflected off the hair gave back an amazing almost white glow.

I introduced a knocked down greenish background wash here. The intention is to use a variety of alizarian and cadmium reds in some skin tones later. The complimentry background should make the main player, the face, really pop. We'll see.

More adjustments. I leaned the eyes a bit further towards green than they really are just to please my color goal. I feel comfortable enough with how the painting is hanging together now(and it's 9:00 in the evening and if I'm going to see my wife today I better start wrapping this up) so its time to loosen up and paint that hair.

A bit of blue and orange in the shaded hair and some very blistering high key values in the sun-lit side. Some thickly applied suggestion of bright red blouse and its time to step back and leave it alone. The Blogger platform isn't very high resolution so you would have to see the actual painting or you can trust me when I say the hair frames Lynn's face without taking over.

You could pick up some smaller brushes and use a variety of colour mixes to take this to a whole different place but for this project I have arbitrarily limited myself to a size and a time frame that results in an dynamic alla prima painting.