The creation of Anne Marie's 2.30hr practise portrait

 Anne Marie

 c 25 x 30cms 

 oil on canvas

Here's another of my practise portraits from a model.

I do these for myself so I play around a bit and don't finish them off as much although we don't have enough time to finish them much anyway! My usual portraits take weeks or months  to complete!

 I usually use a piece of good quality canvas and just tape it to the board. that way they are compact to store. they can be framed at a later date . 
If you like any of these practise portraits they are all available for sale. Contact me.

 

Above - I had to laugh at this stage as the drawing reminded me of the cartoon figure Garfield the cat!

No worries I know she will improve!

At this stage I'm just trying to get the proportions correct and get a likeness in the acrylic under painting . Once I am pretty happy with the likeness I then come back and go over it with Oil colour.

Above  - Getting more accurate. This is probably at about the 1hr mark..I'm pretty happy with this stage. Sometimes I'm tempted to leave them at this stage but I need practise at finishing them off. Unfortunately I know they will always look worse for a while after this  before they all come together - usually in the last panicked 1/2hr! lol's

 Starting to use Oil colour. I've roughly done the dark background.She had lovely hair that was lit nicely and I wanted to do her hair first so I wanted a dark background to show her lighter hair off well.

 

Going through the ugly stage - starting to fill in the flesh colours.

 

Starting to do her hair

 Hair roughly completed!

 Getting there.. more work on her face.

Now her neck- I'm on the home run. I was running out of time now so I did a very quick paint of her amazing clothing .

Done! I'm pretty happy with the portrait.I feel I have captured something of her quirky character. I like working from life as during the process of interesting with the model something of their character usually comes through in the portraits.

 In an ideal world I'd paint my pet portraits  from the actual pet rather than a photo. Unfortunately animals won't stay still long enough!