Grisaille underpainting in oil - portrait of Tayla

It has almost been 2 weeks since I last posted! Life is busy and good and while I have been working on several resin pieces, they are waiting to be resined so not at a great stage to take photos off.

However today (while my lovely children were supposed to be asleep) I started this grisaille underpainting of Tayla so that I can have the matching pair to go with Carter's one. Actually the Tayla in question was sound asleep while I was doing this, however her brother has since woken her up and has had no sleep at all and I can currently hear the "conversations" going on in their bedroom through the baby monitor while I type this.


Here is it next to Carter's portrait so I could check size wise and composition wise that they will match. Sorry about the glare it is a beautiful sunny day today so the garage door is open so sun can stream in. As it is supposed to be Autumn and raining today, I am enjoying the sun.

I will do some more work on this underpainting before I start the glazes, I just want this initial layer to dry first. Will keep you posted.

Some progress on Carter's oil portrait

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may recall back in December last year, I undertook a grisaille underpainting for a portrait of Carter. I then did a number of glazes on his face then got too scared to go any further in case I wrecked it. So it has been hanging on the wall of my studio since December untouched.

Last night, I really felt like painting, I prepared a large canvas for a figure composition I have worked out but as I couldn't do anything more on that, I decided to just go for it with Carter's portrait and I had a really good session and ended up going to bed far too late.

I am really pleased how this is coming along now and I have got over my fear of stuffing up. That is really paralysing and I think that particular fear is one that stops people from really living their passions and dreams. I've been really looking at my self-development over the past few months and last night I didn't even think that I could stuff this up, I just got into it and loved the process without that fear and worry which probably impacts performance when you do fall into that trap.

I just tried to have another crack at it now but the background is still wet so he started getting green hair which is not that ideal, so I am looking forward to refining the last of his face and the hair (which needs a fair bit of work). The lips are a bit too red too so they need to be toned down as well. I do love how the skin is really luminous in real life and I think that is from the grisaille underpainting and then the glazes upon glazes.

So in the word's of Nike "just do it". I'm glad I did and I can't wait to finish it.

Grisaille underpainting - Carter's portrail in oil

Last night my husband was out visiting clients and I finally felt well enough to paint so while the kids slept I hid away in my studio with the dog and cat. YAY!

As I mentioned previously, I really want to explore portraiture in the next year and have been reading up on it. So last night I thought I would do a grisaille underpainting for a portrait of Carter. As my husband had my laptop with me (which felt like a limb was cut off) which has all my photos, I couldn't print off a photo so had to work with what I had which was the same photo that I drew as a charcoal portrait last week. And that worked well. Because I was used to the photo and where the tonal changes were, I found that a really good base point before painting the underpainting and think I will probably do that again for the next portrait.

I spent a couple of hours on this, and concentrated on the face mainly. The hair and t-shirt are not terribly detailed but I didn't think they needed to be in this. I really want to get the luminosity of a child's skin coming through when I start the glazing which is why I spent a long time on his face. I did this all in burnt umber and am really happy with it. Now I am really scared of stuffing up the next stages so I am going to do more research today on how to approach the glazing for the skin tones before I start that tonight.