Self portrait

I painted a self portrait to enter the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year competition.

As is my want I started off with a sort of practice sketch paint

"I really wish I was over there!"

I was not a fan of it, the proportions are wrong and the beard is way to yellow, but I did like the effect of light around me, like a shifting aura.
But I continued

"I also wish I was over there!"

Everyone that see's it tells me I look grumpy, but I always look grumpy and that isn't how it felt to me at all, ah well, can't please everyone I suppose.
Here is reference of my eternally grumpy face

This is why I can never fly to America

A portrait of Mistress Beena

I draw Beena a lot, usually she is reading and fidgets a lot which makes it very difficult, but every now and then she does something that requires her to sit still, like sewing!

She still wouldn't keep that one arm still

But even easier is to just use a photo, which I did, this one

Or these three to be more accurate

So I sketched it onto a piece of canvas (a step I forgot to record) and painted over it with some burnt umber acrylic, the burnt umber went a lovely grey when it mixed with the graphite from the sketch, but what harm

Insert paint here

I then set about the joyful task of getting the oils out and in the space of about 2... maybe 3... possibly 4 hours, I dunno, I was totally in the zone, this was the result

Its similar to make-up, but more paint is involved

This was one of those paintings that just worked for me, there are a couple small things I will alter later on, but they don't even bother me that much to be honest which is a rarity in and of itself... maybe I should do this for a living.

Definitely finished this time

OK, so after some feedback from the client I have made a few alterations to the portrait. I took the red out of the cheeks and lip, and made the lip a little less fat too. The badge on the guys cap had to be totally redone also as he had been promoted since the picture I was given for reference was taken but nobody told me :) such is life, I actually much prefer it now, I think it looked a little cartoonish with the rosy cheeks but I was going to the reference, I have since been told it was a very cold day the day the picture was taken, hence the redness. But it's all good now. The colour in the picture doesn't match the actual painting but I'm not much at photographing my work.

Finished portrait

Thought I would post the finished portrait of that guy from the navy I was posting the process of last time.
I'm not happy with it really, but I never am.

More portraits for the Navy

Well look at that, almost a whole month since last I posted something! I have been a very busy boy with this course I am on, just finished the latest module, object oriented design in java, three weeks to learn everything up to an intermediate level, Ill be lucky to retain half of it I think.

Well, this weekend I get to settle into the over-whelming heat to do a commission I got to do a portrait in oils for some guy in the Irish navy.

Apparently they saw the one I did of my Da a long while back and thought it would make a nice gift for whoever the guy is. As always the picture I got to paint from is crap and fuzzy, but what can ya do.

I started this at about 2 pm today and its now 3 in the morning and I'm at that stage where I swing between thinking its OK and wanting to take a knife to it. What do you think? Also, feel free to be jealous of my totally professional studio setting, i.e. the kitchen table.

The center one is a bit terrifying, granted, but everything looks crap in the middle of being done. I always want to stop at the point of having blocked it in with the brown, if I could just do painting like that I would be a happy chappy.

Anyway, apparently some other guys in the Irish version of a Navy are waiting to see how this turns out to see if they want to get commission me for their own, so who knows, maybe Ill be posting more of these.

Portrait of Da all finished

Portrait of Da

Attempting Da in oils once again, so this is my second ever attempt at oil painting. I learned a lot from the last one. This time there were no wite spirits to be used for anything but cleaning the brushes as the fumes give me a headache no matter how much I ventilate and it just causes problems later on. I did forget like a tool to take process shots this time, so after painting from 2 today until midnight I got this (and no matter how much I kept the lid on the jar of white spirit, another headache)

I'm pretty happy with it so far. His head should be wider but I can live with it. The medium is fun to work with but hard to control sometimes and it can be very unforgiving. I'm trying to keep it soft and maintain the planes of the face, its bloody hard man. Looking forward to finishing it though and seeing how it turns out.

Journal recovered

While I had the oils out and once I was finished the pretend portrait in practice of doing a proper one I decided to use what was left on the palette to paint over the writing on the cover of a new journal/sketchbook thing I got with a voucher I was given for my birthday. Its a lovely book, all bendy and lovely quality paper, it just had the manufacturers title emblazoned on the front, which I hate.

Foolishly I didnt even think about what I was going to paint, but I think it turned out ok

I think I was channeling Bob Ross on those branches

Portrait in oil

I started my first ever oil painting this afternoon. Want to do good portraits so I started out with a picture of my Da in his navy days which recently came to a close. Here he is on guard of honour duty for president Robinson sometime in the 90's (It was shortly after he got back from his tour in Lebanon is all I can remember)

So I started off sketching onto the canvas paper... stuff. It was a pain, mainly due to me not being happy with it no matter what I did, but the material finish of the paper is hard to draw on, all you can really do is mark and smudge

I started off with a brown wash thing going on

My main problem was that I had no idea how to mix a medium with the oils to get desired effects, so I stuck with the white spirits for a while and then randomly switched to a bottle of liquin I bought for just such an emergency

And thats just about where I left it I think, I did do a little more, but nothing of note, I think I played with the tones and planes of the face more and added some colour to the cap brim. All in all a hell of a fun day, im high as hell from the white spirits, gonna have to get some odourless stuff for sure.