Exercise in oils

Here is an oil painting using the same image of Tom Hardy as before. This time with a little more consideration than the quick free watercolour exercises.

Painted in around three hours. oil on canvas.

Dalry Demo

 

A demo from this afternoon at Dalry Art Club. This is Jamie who came to visit the studio on Saturday with his family. (Dad “Richard” is painted in a previous post  *here*!)

Cool clean skin tones, quite bluish and great to paint. The natural light comes in from a door to the right. The session lasted an hour and a half and I spent another hour at home to finish. Thanks to all at Dalry and Kilbirnie for the opportunity. 🙂

Demo – Effie and Henry

A fun evening spent at New Cunninghame Art Club tonight. The demo was an oil painting of Effie and Henry. Didn’t get around to the elaborate embroidered collars. Time against me but pleased I got so far with the heads.

This pose is typical of the dogs relationship. Effie (4 y.o.) is barely tolerant of Henry(8 months), who never leaves her alone!

Richard Demo

 

A demonstration this morning for the Saturday group. Emphasising tone over colour (without neglecting colour!).

It’s a real shove to force the darks towards the correct level. Your instinct tells you to paint flesh tone, but you have to remind yourself to paint the reflected light instead.

The Waitress III – Cunninghame Art Club Demo

The third and final demo version of the  “Waitress”. This time a 3/4 view as Kate looks out the window casting a deep shadow over the left of the head.

I finished this at home and spent an extra half hour adjusting. I had forgotten the eye lashes too! So I had to go back to it.

Kilmarnock Art Club Demo

I had a really enjoyable night demonstrating a portrait in oils. This is  “The Waitress II”. Although this time it was slightly less than two hours, I feel I was concentrating more and hence I got more of a likeness. When the pressure is on, I suppose. Not sure if I have the same character of the last, but too tired to make a judgement. I am using Georgian oils here. They are pretty decent for student quality but I feel when mixing the paint I don’t get the body of paint I need. They tend to be weak on opacity, I think.

The Waitress

I am demonstrating tomorrow night for Kilmarnock Art Club. I have been putting in a bit of practice tonight. This is Kate waiting to go to work at Royal Troon where she waitresses. She looks slightly bored and doesn’t seem too eager to leave for work! I took some photos of her before she went as I saw something worth recording in the moment. I hope to paint a large portrait of her in “character”. This was around two hours work.

Portrait Slideshow

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Hopefully this will work as a demonstration of the portrait of Stephen’s mum. It’s the first time I have tried the slideshow gadget in my posts.

You will see in the early stages of the work that I apply the paint in a patchwork of planes. Attempting to place the right colour first time, to minimise future corrections, in this alla prima technique. When the canvas has been covered, I can concentrate on refining the drawing and adding more paint to enable finer adjustments and corrections. The painting is finished when I can no longer find anything to adjust!

Demo no.5

Demo no. 5 at the “have to leave it to walk the dog” stage. I’ll get back down to the studio later to finish what was a tough week at the coal face (not exactly but you know what I mean).

Here is Scott. Skin is completely different colour than the others. Pale and more yellow ochre in the mix, reds are evident only in the shadows. His head tilted down makes for strong shadows underneath and high contrast.

The paint is more buttery and the technique used is going Frans Hals(y).

I ran out of time on the shirt, the strong check will take an hour or so by itself. You can see how the painting begins in the gap. I have used a 4×4 grid and the outline is painted in ultramarine blue. The blue shows through as the painting develops and is less likely to disappear into the skin tones.

I’ve really enjoyed this week and am pleasantly surprised how much my speed developed as the days went on.

Demo no. 4

A face from the archives for demo no. 4 for the Thursday HAC group. I sprung it on this captive audience as I forgot to tell them they were getting a demo!

This is Ken with great skin tones to play with and then a wonderful background grey to mix. As the week has progressed I have been getting faster and arrive through the stages of the painting with more confidence. The perks of putting the hours in. This one was about an hour and a half in class then another hour in the studio to bring it to a close. The paint today was very fluid, using the medium of turps and linseed oil more.