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.

Oil portrait - Carter - completed!

Here it is, the final completed painting of Carter. It is 300 x 300 x 40mm. Took me a few months but I am pretty happy with it, especially as it is my first completed portrait in oils.

I've taken some photos at various points so I thought I would post them here as there definitely were some ugly stages that this one went through (even though the subject matter is exceptionally beautiful and I am not biased at all).

Here is the original grisaille underpainting. I did this with burnt umber and solvent just to focus on the tonal side of things, mainly with his face. I didn't really bother with the hair.

Once that was dry I started with the glazes. Initially these were all transparent and I was trying to remember to keep the red ones on the cheeks and the yellow on the forehead.

Then when I did my first glaze with titanium white with liquin, all of a sudden he looked like a ghost and I think that was when I got scared and left it for 3 months.

I am now trying to find a photo of Tayla so that she can be my next subject. I am tossing up whether to do the next one with a grisaille underpainting as well or try it without. I did find that his skin did end up really luminous which is what I wanted and I think that may be because of all the layers of glazes.

It is interesting to look back at these stages and it does encourage me to keep the faith when they are going through the ugly stages!