Monday's portrait from life Saskia

Saskia kept a lovely smile. She was amazing. She even fell asleep while modelling still smiling!
I love the zap of this portrait and her hair..I just have to figure out how to keep that zap as i refine the portraits. My self portrait looks drab next to this one.

Creating my self portrait

The portrait group I paint with are all painting a self portrait for an exhibition at the end of this month. I've left it a bit late but at least I've started.
I'm painting myself without glasses as a lot of the portrait will be painted looking in the mirror and I can't see myself from that distance with glasses..( that's my story and I'm sticking to it..lol's)..No it is true.
I started with a photo to capture the concept and I used the photo to get the sketch accurately done.

I'm painting in acrylic paint and this is just getting the angle of the head and relative distances of the length of the nose and eyes etc..It's pretty rough as I'll be constantly correcting it until I feel it's right.At this stage I just want to be sure the whole portrait will fit on the canvas.

 

 I quite like this stage but I have to change it as it's incorrect.The left eye needs to go down , the face shape changes a bit as does the hair shape. When I had the photo taken I had a narrow strappy top on that makes me look like I haven't got anything on.The shoulders are too distracting anyway so I'll add a shirt later.

This is more accurate.The photo was taken outside in flat lighting .Now I want to add a spot light for a bit of extra interest with the lighting.

Adjusted sketch with lighting now coming from the left and highlighting the left side of my face and hand. Not a bad start. I can see the left eye is still a bit big but I'll adjust that as I go to Oils next. From now on I'll be painting mainly with the mirror. Typical.. The first thing we tell the model at portrait classes is to take up a pose they can comfortably hold for 3hrs at 20mins a time..So what do I do.. My neck is going to kill me! lol's The next stage will be to introduce colour in Oils. I want this portrait to be very colourful.

Here I'm starting to come back and cover the whole portrait in Oils. Here I am now using a mirror and I have a spotlight on myself.I used a photo to get the general proportions and drawing right because the pose was hard to hold.

Covering the face

A bit further along

My face is roughly done in the one above now to do my hand and roughly cover the rest of the canvas.

Now to refine my shirt and apron and generally get a an accurate likeness and lighting on  my face. This is the stage where it slows down . I can fine tune the face for 10 hours and you probably won't even notice the difference in a photo.

This photo is a bit lighter than the previous one. That's the photographer. The last one was a bit too dark.

This is many hours later.. spot the difference lol's..Sometimes I can work for hours and when i compare the painting to earlier photos it seems I've even gone backwards..argh!

Getting pretty close I think. The eyes aren't as vibrant as the photo my camera loves to enhance that colour blue and nothing else which makes it hard to photograph certain paintings..

 I'm a bit disappointed as I really wanted this painting to be very colourful. One problem is that half of my face is in shade so it's hard to do a lot with that and I need to keep the focus on the side being hit by the light which means keeping the other side darkish so the highlighted side has impact.

 Finished..

'Making a mark' 

Sue self portrait -2012

I'll post a photo of it in the exhibition when I get photos . This photo is pretty accurate colourwise.Some of the earlier progressive photos aren't. I used a better camera for the final photo.It's a hard painting to get a decent photo of.

 Here we are at the exhibition.

Note the size of a 40 x 50cms image. A framed portrait 40 x 50cms image will be even bigger and makes a stunning focal point in a home.

Tania -This weeks 2.30hr portrait from a model

 Tania

 30 x 40cms 

unfinished Oil on canvas

Painted from life

I'm pretty happy with this portrait. It has captured the light nicely .I deliberately left her eyes less finished than usual as I liked the blue coming through.Thanks for sittting so well Tania.