A Portrait with Dramatic Lighting

I was delighted to be able to spend three hours working on this portrait of Tony. We had a nicely dramatic low light source and Tony held his pose wonderfully.

The Finished Painting

Even as I was painting, though, I knew I hadn't gone dark enough with the left side of the face. 

When this happens, I tend to paint away to a finish from the model (second last picture above) and then a couple of days later add a dark glaze over the area where the darker tone should have been. 

Here I used liquin tinted with burnt umber and alizarin crimson. The good thing about this process is that it saves all the modulation in the initial painting but just darkens the area by a few degrees giving the painting a much more palbable sense of drama.

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The Portrait Sketch from Life

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's workshop at KennedyArt.

I do spend a lot of time reciting the same few principles, so I thought I would put down the basics of my technique in the form of a print-out. The painting I did of Andy seemed like a good one for the purpose.

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Process Photos of the Andy Painting

 I took a series of photos during the process of painting Andy.

Bustling London....Almost Done

I've pretty much finished this illustration now.
I have scanned the painting and am giving it a final tweak in Photoshop.
Here are the final three shots of the painting process.

Bustling London; Three More Process Pictures

Here are three more pictures showing the progress of my Bustling London illustration.
I've begun adding the characters on the streets and a lot more detail all over.

Three Hour Study of Darren

I've been thinking a bit more methodically recently about my life painting process coming up to my portraiture workshop and demo at Kennedy Art this Saturday.
On the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words I am showing the process of how I painted this study of Darren over a three hour period at the RHA recently.
The pictures were taken at half hourly intervals.

90 Minute Study of Giuseppe

I took photos at thirty minute intervals during the painting of this study of my pal Giuseppe.
The photos are with a camera/phone so the quality isn't great, but I do like the idea of recording the process.
Not least because I will have a record of the lovely loose brushwork that gets obliterated as the work continues.
Giuseppe has agreed to pose for me one of these days and to let me film the whole procedure. I will then chop it down to a nice size for youTube and I'll post it up here.

Full Step-by-Step of "The Gift of the Magi" cover

You can see a much fuller version of the step-by-step process I used to create the cover of The Gift of the Magi on Scamp, the Irish Illustration Blog.