This is where my latest work can be seen including step-by-step progress reports, news and merchandising as well as features on artists, living and dead who I would like to draw people's attention to. Please note all my images are covered by International Copyright laws. Copyright to other artists images resides with the artist or their estate, their inclusion on this blog a result of my missionary zeal and to no profit for myself!

Sunday 17 August 2014

Ruth - stage 1

The painting so far
Well here goes, a portrait of the lovely Ruth Schechner in my "gold" style, this time in oils and bronze powders at the suggestion of Pat Wilshire, the co-organiser of Illuxcon. I am hoping that I can finish this in time as I seem to get lots of disruptions to my working days but at least today I managed to get started. The first thing I did was to try out some ideas on the computer in Photoshop, looking at different poses and different arrangements of gold, black and red (the primary colour scheme for the picture). After agonising over whether to paint it on MDF or canvas (I chose canvas) I first gave it a wash of Burgundy acrylic as I needed an undercolour to work over; I chose acrylic as it is fast drying and I could get on with drawing it up straight away. I gridded up the reference photo I had decided to use from last week's session with Ruth and painted the same grid on the canvas in acrylic as it would not disappear when I start putting the oils over it. Once I had finished "drawing" it up in a mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple oil paint with a stubby oxhair brush I then blocked in the background with the same colour mix (which hid the grid) and then the hair with the same colour mix but a lot more Dioxazine Purple in it.
Gridded up

Working out in Photoshop

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