About this artwork

Portrait of Ian, Helen Withington February 2019. Oil on canvas using the sight-size technique and limited traditional palate.
Painted at LARA (The London Atelier of Representational Art).

This portrait took 30 hours over the space of 5 days

Masterclass in Portrait Painting, Day 1 of 5
Using the sight-size method from the old masters, with Nitram charcoal, which is harder and more robust than the brittle willow charcoal. This takes a lot of concentration! 10-5 on one single drawing. Getting a good likeness is made easier by looking at negative shapes, shadows and using a black mirror! Tomorrow we get the oil paints out.

Masterclass in Portrait Painting day 2 of 5
Today involved blocking in colour using a specially selected range of rich oils, on a prepared imprimatura canvas surface. Adding cool and warm tones by mixing very tiny amounts of paint using a palette knife, accuracy is important in this class. Before painting, the charcoal drawing from yesterday was transferred onto the canvas using tracing paper, willow charcoal and a ballpoint pen. Despite being 2 hours late to the class due to a delayed train service, I was able to catch-up. Lucky for me, as tomorrow I'll be refining the features and improving the likeness...

Masterclass in portrait painting, day 3 of 5
Today involved focusing on areas like the eyes, lips and nose, getting the shapes and colours as accurate as possible. It's amazing how many skin tones you find when looking very very very carefully! All kinds of yellows, browns, pinks and more. Tomorrow will be about adding more detail to the eyes, neck, hair - everything!

Masterclass in Portrait Painting, day 4 of 5
I've been focusing on the shadows again and now the eye. Lots of mixing of skin tones again. The white of the eye is a surprising mixture between grey warmed up with raw umber. Tomorrow's task will be the hair, jumper and finishing touches!

Masterclass in Portrait Painting, day 5 of 5
So here's the final painting. By focusing on blending the hair into the background, a natural look is created. Harsh colour would make it look fake, like a Ken doll! This is a technique the old masters used, like Caravaggio. Although today was the final session at LARA, I might continue to work on the background to give it depth. Light against darker parts of the face and vice versa.