Oil painting – Kid walking past
This subject was a kid that was walking past a band that was playing at an event by the ocean. He had just turned his head while walking past as if to glimpse the band and move on. I caught this pose at exactly the right time a moment later and it wouldn’t have been such an angular pose.
Painting time: 45mins
Painting Technique – Initial sketch
I just went at it on this painting – the sketch was hardly anything at all – perhaps just the angle of his neck turned the hair going across his face and the overall shape of the head on the board. This was another painting where I essentially saw the whole thing in my head before even lifting a brush, so any underpainting was minimal.
Painting Technique – Brushwork
In this portrait I again started back with my medium brush. It wasn’t an exercise in detail with this portrait but rather seeing the blocks of color. I also realised with this painting after I had finished it that you can actually get your brushwork wrong or exaggerate it to the point of purely a suggestive stroke and you don’t loose the likeness of the subject. Which was something that ran counter to sketching in pencil. With pencil you need to define the form with line but with paint the form is also able to be defined with subtle variations in value of a color.
Painting Technique – Skin tones, colors and values.
I started with a different mix than my usual burnt umber only underpainting – I knew that there were going to be bright yellows and a lot of variations from the mid tones to the darks so I wanted to lift the background and also capture the sunlight in the scene. I gave the background a lighter treatment here and also used that sunlight hue as an underpainting to the lighter areas of his face. Hardly any of it ended up showing through but it has the effect of balancing the background and the subject via a similar hue – placing the subject in the scene.
Painting Technique – overall image
Extremely happy with this image. Again it is a portrait that I would say you could take now, and if it were still wet start blending the skin tones together and cleaning up the style however I feel the overall image would lose more than it would gain.
There was a spontaneity to the movement in this subjects pose a one off moment that I wanted to use the brushwork to capture.
