Monthly Archives: May 2015

Portrait With Headphones

Finished the oil portrait of my youngest daughter. Had a really hard time to get her right eye to match the left in colour and proportion. The detail photo was shot indoors so it turned out a bit yellow but that is the final eye. I used Burnt Sienna, Cobolt and Ultramarine Blue. Yellow Ochre and Cadmium red with Titanium white for the skin.

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The Easel Is Back On The Porch

This spring is much colder than last year but I am an optimist so I have carried the easel out to the porch. Painting in daylight beats indoors anytime but it is almost too cold to keep dexterity.

I have had two good days this month and worked on two oilpaintings, both repaints on top of other ideas. I have used photos for reference on both. The first canvas was a failed portrait in oil.
To avoid letting the old image distract me I turned the canvas to landscape.

This is the loose sketch which I somehow prefer to the more finished state.

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Then I tried out different backgrounds digitally.

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It resulted in this.

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Then I messed it up and left it for a while.

The second canvas was  an unfinished acrylic painting by my daughter that she did not want to continue on.

I continued with acrylics sketching indoors.

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I really liked how the background provided colour.
When I continued outdoors in oil I restrained myself to Ultramarine to pick up the blue from the acrylic sketch. At that session I also had some of the dirty pastel green and burnt sienna left over on the palette from the other painting and decided to even out the background.

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For the skin I use titanium white with yellow ocre and cadmium red.

Continued in next post…

Becoming Friends With Oilpastels

I have tried oilpastels a few times over the years but never quite fell for it.  But this time it worked out ok. The secret is to be generous with the paint and have a rough surface. Then it feels almost like painting. It is easy to work over an area several times to get it the way I want it. For the portrait in the bottom picture I used cadmium yellow watercolour as a base.

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