Harlequin

This blog has been filled with a lot of portrait paintings and thoughts about portrait paintings, but I also make other work which I add from time to time! This is a fairly recent work, that I have been working on it for the last year or so, and it has developed in a surprising way, with dots! I have been banging my head…

Portraits in a landscape

I can’t take too much credit for the composition of this one which was originally photographed on the Cornish coast, one of my favourite places! I like the dribble of seawater coming off the net on the left. Its a good dribble. This was another painting that I began in acrylics and finished in oil paint, and its a method I am going to…

Portrait in acrylic and oils

This is a portrait I did a while ago but have never shown it. Its actually a posthumous portrait from a photo. I found it in a folder titled ‘other portraits’ and not having seen it for a while I thought in the end it is probably something worth revisiting. Its interesting because I was trying to work out how to start a portrait…

Glazing skin tones like Caravaggio

I don’t want to seem like I’m making any grand claims but I hope to show in a new video what for me is something like the process of glazing that Caravaggio used. I’m coming to this based on trial and error. How nice it would be to travel back in time to watch him at work! But from looking carefully at his paintings…

Posthumous portrait

I have painted a number of these over the years but haven’t shown any until now. I thought this one worked well with the glazing process. I obviously stuck closely to the photo reference I was sent, and I painted the face using a Raw Umber and Titanium White underpainting, or grisaille and then followed this with glazes and halfpastes of Titanium White, Cadmium…

Figurative in felt tip

I feel I have finally found a way to bring all the elements of my practice together at the same time and from now will be embarking on a new series of work in pen. As a sculptor by training I have always love drawing first and foremost and specifically drawing from the figure. Figure drawing in itself is more like a technical exercise…

Portrait of a peasant girl after Velazquez

This is the first of a number of Velazquez paintings I would like to try and copy. You can see the video in real time on my patreon channel, see the link here on my website. I was interested in what palette he used and also in his use of the imprimatura and how that was left for some of the middle tones and…

New Caravaggio technique video – underpainting stage

Hi there, I’ve just posted this on youtube. Its going to be one of 2 videos there but 6 in total on patreon where they are also unedited and in real time. This video is cobbled together from 3 real time films, about 3 hours painting in all. I loved copying this painting and learned so much. Looking forward to the next one! I…

Portrait of a young girl after Rubens, grisaille underpainting

I’ve been finishing the grisaille for this portrait painting copy off camera, which is relaxing! I worked on it for another 2 hours roughly, mainly adding pure black here and there and adjusting the shadows. There were a few areas where I sharpened the drawing, but its a fine balance between trying to work in a way that is possibly similar to Rubens and…

Portrait of a young girl by Rubens

I’ve started making a copy of this beautiful portrait painting by Rubens, with a view to learning about his underpainting and glazing technique. I realised its quite similar in subject to the first portrait I added to my youTube channel, so it feels fitting that its also the first on my new Patreon channel. All my real- time videos will be there from now…

Pet portrait – Khaleesi

This is a painting I completed a while back. I was sent a photo and worked from that. Khaleesi is an amputee! Glazing really lends itself to painting fur, and this was completed in 3 passes. I didn’t work up from a grisaille but blocked in the colour areas, deepening and enriching the layers with glazes. Below are some of the process photos.  

Bistre painting of 3rd arabesque

This is another painting of a dancer I finished recently. I am combining my love of glazing with drawing, here starting to draw the line with the brush in a bistre. This has a translucency I like. Then I glaze over in thin layers of paint in the same way I would paint my portraits. Glazing really has an unrivalled luminosity! I’m not sure…

Ballet dancer painting ‘Croise derriere en l’air’

Painted in Raw Umber and white. Raw Umber bistre to start with, and then worked into with some white. I am trying to paint like a drawing, and sculpt a painting! I would like to make something reminiscent of sculpture on the painted surface. When I paint the line I am carving it, modelling the paint and then refining by taking it away. This…

Painting with Raw Umber and White

I wanted to paint some more using Raw Umber and Titanium White to paint the underpainting for portraits. Looking back over some earlier work from a couple of years ago inspired me to start using them together again. This is a detail from a recent portrait before the glazing. I wanted to approach it with a more fluid, perhaps bolder (for me) style. The…

Glazing a portrait from grisaille to colour

This was a commissioned portrait of a young girl and here are before and after images to show how I developed the underpainting. Grisaille underpainting was completed first and then I added some layers of colour glazes. With this method, rather than mixing the colours on the palette the colours are ‘mixed’ optically through progressive glazes – very thin layers – of oil paint with…