My Painting Process: Stage Three

As you can see from the latest picture the painting is receiving the final layer of detail.

This stage is fairly simple to explain. It is basically layering on the colours in the face.

The skin on the face of a person is not just a peachy colour. If you look at a persons face you will see many different colours. Take a look at the child on the left, her face has been completed here. You can see oranges shaping the nose and the left side of her face (the right side as you look at her), there is purple defining the lower side of the cheekbon,e and blue highlights the top of her nose. These are just a few examples of the different colours in there.

If you looked at the same subjects face on a different day you would see different colours in these areas, as the lighting will be different and there will also be physical changes such as the flush of her cheeks, or the colours around her eyes if she was more or less tired. This is the beauty of the human face, it is continually lit with beautiful colours and these colours vary in different lighting.

Whilst this rule of colours in the face also applies to any other part of the human body (I will look for the colours when I proceed to the neck and shoulders in this picture), the colours and shades are more detailed and complex in the face, making them (for me personally) the most interesting part of a portrait.

I will take you through the finishing off stage (or the first finishing stage anyway) in my next blog.

My Painting Process: Stage Two

As you can see from this picture I have started the next stage of layering the oils.

You can see two layers of paint here on either half of my subjects face. The child on the left has one half of her head with the next layer from stage one, or mid-layer of colours blocked in (the right half and top of her hair) and the other side has a more detailed top-layer added in (the left and ponytail).

The 'mid-layer' (left and ponytail) brings out the shades that stand out the most in the face on the picture, i.e. the flush of the child's cheeks and the dark shades in her eyebrow/ponytail. These layers are added in before the detailed layer to make them show through in the painting just as strongly as they do in the photograph. An easy way of noticing which colours show through strongest is to squint as you view your subject - the stronger tones and colours will be clearly visible whilst you do this and other weaker notes will shrink into the background.

In the next couple of days I will post another blog illustrating the more detailed side of the painting and featuring a picture of a more advanced stage.

My Painting Process: Stage One

Okay, so here is a bit of a guide to the process I go through when painting. This post will cover stage one, which is basically the under painting and blocking in of the underlying colours. The picture I will demonstrate with is a commission of two grandchildren to be completed in oils on canvas.

Materials used:

• Oil Paints: Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, French Ultramarine, Titanium White and Black
• A3 Box Canvas, White
• Oil Brushes (small and medium sized)
• Mix of one part white spirit and six parts water
• HB Pencil
  

First of all I mixed a cream coloured paint to cover the canvas and take away the harsh lighting of the background.

Next I drew a basic outline of the two children. To do this I first marked onto the original photograph the head and shoulders of the children using the pencil. I then split the original picture into quarters and split the faces of the children into sixths (a line down the middle splitting the faces via the centre of the nose and then three horizontal lines through the eyeline the nose and the mouth of the children). This 'gridding up' process simplified the drawing process and helped me to add the smaller details on the faces, as I coppied across the grid I created on the photograph.

I always draw a very basic outline, this frees up my painting and makes the process less clinical. I mark out the shoulders, head, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and the collar and edges of clothes. I always take time with the outline however as any mistakes at this point can reflect greatly once the paint is laid on and can often be difficult to fix at the later stage of applying the oils.

Next I look at the underlying tones of the skin hair and clothes. These tones are usually strongly highlighted colours/shades that appear briefly in the images and appear to 'come through' from the background.

So for the skin a light cream colour shone in the highlights of the girls cheeks so I painted in a light cream colour. The same process was applied with the reddy brown color appearing though the hair and the bright white highlight illustrated in the girls' clothing.

The reason for doing this is to firstly create a base to paint on. Secondly to bring the colours through in the finished painting, to the same degree that they appear on the original photograph.

I also believe there is a third reason for doing this. It applies personally to me and I think it would apply to other artists; if you fill the canvas with these blocks of colour it starts the layering process and is the alternative to working from top left to bottom right as many artists do. I believe the layering process psychologically is a more satisfying method of completing a picture as it covers the canvas completely and slightly prevents the all intimidating blank areas of a canvas - it relieves the pressure of looking at what you haven't yet done!

So the first stage of painting is completed. Tomorrows post will cover the next stage of the painting process.

How The Market Went

So Sunday was the day of the market. I was nervous beforehand though excited at the same time. My pre-event butterflies where mainly down to not knowing where to go and if the setup and lugging about of my stall would be a struggle. But myself and my sister coped, especially with the gratefully received help my uncle gave me.

Rain washed out any hopes of gaining a potential sale or even a few contacts during the first hour or so, yet eventually the weather cleared and we were away!

A few promising enquiries came in with some great potential of orders from a few punters. A comment from one viewer told me of how thrilled she was to see some 'nice traditional portraits', which pleased me and gave me great encouragement. As these comments came in I was thrilled and it made the experience feel worth while

Yet whether or not these people follow through with an order at the end of the day would be an added bonus to what I gained as a creative from that day. I got some great inspiration from these guys, they were all artists like me, they had produced fantastic peices and enjoying the publics recognition of their precious work. There was so much talent on show that it would be very difficult to come away uninspired and not feeling the need to get back to a blank canvas or peice of paper.

Roll on the next events!

Piazza Art Markets

This coming Sunday I will be setting up stall outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. The Piazza Art Markets are to be held on a Sunday in each of the next four months (including this one). They were launched last year for the city's capital of culture, giving artists the chance to display, sell and demonstrate their work to a wide audience. They are back for 2009 and I am going to be there for all four of the events, displaying my work and hopefully selling and taking a few orders.

I am thoroughly looking forward to the days and experiencing the response that I get from the Piazza's punters! I very rarely get a chance to experience a reaction first hand from people; selling is a task usually undertaken by others for me, so this is a good opportunity for me to develop as an artists as well.

There is still time to apply if anyone else is interested in setting up stall and it should be a great chance to view the talent of the North West's creatives, so head down there and pray for the weather for me readers!

Artists in Common

Someone very special to me posted a blog asking a few questions of me. Mascarandy is the blog to be viewed and to sum the question up they were asking about the characters I paint. Do I connect with them as a character and how do I feel about them as I view them?

First of all though lets go back to Mascarandy. This outfit is designed to give you an inside peek into the world of all creatives whether you are a writer, musician, artist or whoever. The said article on the blog is looking at how people in general view other people and how Mike Appleton (Mascarandy himself and a published and talented writer) and other authors view characters.

For Mike it links into the creative process. Not only is the way others view him and the way he sees others a part of his consciousness when he is walking down the street, but it is something that I think helps him when he is scribbling away creating another highly detailed character.

Characters are evidently important to Mike, it is one of the things that struck me when I read his very first book Tony Hand, A Life In British Ice Hockey. Mike was the ghost writer on this novel and suberbly crafted the character of Hand in a way that a rare handful of writers can. When reading the audience immediately recognises a clear personality portrayed by Mike.

So the question Mike asks of me as an artist is do we work under the same format?

In a nutshell we do. When commissioned the task at hand is not only to get a good likeness for the client, but to translate their personality onto the image as well. Not only is it important to the customer, but it is an important skill that can set you apart from other artists. It is not for me to judge if I have this skill, but for a viewer to judge and I hope it is something I have.

The picture Mike highlighted was of my cousin Lydia (mentioned in an earlier post on this blog). Mike asks am I thinking about the personality behind that smile? As an artist you have just got to, and honestly it should come naturally to concentrate on these aspects of a subject, as it sets them out as an individual. As Mike rightly says you can tell alot about someone by just looking at them. So that first moments judgement for me needs to be suggested in paint or pencil.

So I am going to throw Mikes question out to the audience just as Mike did and ask, do other creatives do this? When musicians write a song about someone, do they bring out aspects of their personallity in their lyrics by sometimes merely looking at them, do actors do the same when playing a role? K M Turner and Mascardany want to know!

Where It All Begins

Where did it all begin for me? Well I first started doing portraits when I did my GCSE's. It was at this time that I was really starting to become a step ahead in school when it came down to art. Don't get me wrong I have always been with pencil or paintbrush in hand, but my 15th and 16th years really brought it out of me. I was thriving on this skill that I could easily be the best at and portraits being the most difficult subjects to capture, really started to enthrall me.

So from there on in portraits were my favoured subject. I started doing them all the time and was constantly striving to learn how to recreate a recognisable face on canvas or paper. Above is one attempt, an acrylic painting of Coldplay's Chris Martin. It was displayed in an exhibition I was lucky enough to have in Rennie's in St Helens last year and I gained positive comments from the public in the galleries book. These comments were greatly appreciated and spurred me on to work harder and create more. I am also proud of the early pictures, they are a personal symbol of me really becoming an artist.

Do you define an artist as someone who earns a living through their artwork? The answer is quite simply, no. An artist is someone who paints, draws or expresses themselves by creating in other ways.

I truly feel that at that point when I was fifteen years old and starting GCSE art, I became a real artist, and I am sure this is how others discover their love.

Learning All The Time

This was an A2 oil on canvas and was difficult!

It was painted from a proffessionaly taken photograph. By the time the image had got to me it was edited and smoothed out, which proved to be more of a challenge than you would expect.

It seems that, as I am used to creating from a raw image, one that was air brushed and digitally simplified was a struggle. The extra colours that make up skin tone weren't there when I was looking for them, so in my mind I made them up. Needless to say this didn't work until I realised what was going wrong.

Once I realised what was going wrong, I proceeded to create a picture with minimal detail and colours and that seemed to work for me. I learnt from this and next time I do a similar picture it should be better and I won't be re-painting sections of the picture, which always causes a compromise to quality.

I am pleased with the bride, I got the likeness pretty quickly for her. However the groom proved to be the struggle. The expression on his face along with the simplified image meant I became unstuck at one point.

Overall though I think the picture turned out to be successful and a good likeness of the newlyweds and at the end of the day that is what I am striving for, for my clients. To create a quality piece that captures something special and personal.