Taylor Swift portrait in the manner of William Bouguereau

Hi there I have just painted this portrait of Taylor Swift to demonstrate an aspect of Bouguereau’s technique, working straight into colour from the drawing. I worked on it for around 4 hours including the drawing stage. Below is the drawing stage which I completed using Burnt Umber and Linseed oil medium in a kind of ‘bistre’ effect. I did model some of the…

Portrait of a young girl after Rubens, 2nd glaze!

Hi there, I’ve been looking forward to doing this for a while, and now I’ve completed the films of both the glazes. Here is a photo of before and after the 2nd glaze. So this is the painting again showing the change from the 1st to the 2nd glaze, and then following on from that you can see the 2nd glaze next to the…

Video of 1st glaze on underpainting ‘After Bouguereau’

I have just finished the first glaze in oil paints on my grisaille underpainting. This short video project was all about trying to work out how Bouguereau made his paintings, something I have often wondered about. His works have a particular translucent quality and it was my mission to try and fathom the processes behind this. I think the only real way one can…

Portrait painting showing grisaille underpainting

This is a detail of a painting that I have shown before of the effect of glazing over a grisaille underpainting in a short time.

Drawing is the foundation of portrait painting – Ballet lesson

Here is a portrait of my daughter at ballet class that I painted before attending Louis Smith’s glazing workshop. To begin I painted the whole thing in a ‘dead layer’ or monochrome using Burnt Umber, Ivory Black and Titanium White. Then I did some very thin coloured oil glazes and some ‘half-pastes’ where you’ve got a bit of white mixed with the glazes, which are more…

Painting portraits with Sap Green. Lets hear it for Sap Green!

Sap Green is a generic name of a rich deep green, warm in hue. I used it for all of my portraits and in this blog explain how I go about it.

Glazing over acrylic underpainting video

Here is a new video of me working on a first colour glaze in oils, over an acrylic grisaille underpainting, which is a new medium for me. I’m trying to speed up the process a little bit. It took a while to get the hang of acrylic, something I’m still progressing with. The grisaille is done using raw umber and titanium white, but hopefully…

Portrait painting step by step, glazing over grisaille

I’ve nearly finished this portrait painting. Its had 5 glazes over the initial underpainting. This picture shows the grisaille, the first glaze (which I filmed and is on youtube) and then the 5th glaze which is almost the last one. I still intend to go over the hair and background again amongst other things. The background was a dark green the glaze before this!…

Portrait painting from grisaille underpainting to fourth glaze

Here are a selection of photos showing the completed glazes done over the grisaille underpainting in this portrait commission.

Portrait painting video demonstration

My latest film, another shot while putting on the first glaze over a grisaille underpainting, is now finished and on youtube. Here’s a link to the first installment: It’s been an interesting experience filming myself working, and quite strange to watch it back as I’ve never seen myself working before. I wanted to make an authentic account of working with this method, and create…