Smell the Roses, Portrait

I’m almost ready to call this one done but first I want it to just sit here on the easel for a moment so I can come back and look at what final refinements I’ll make once I see it with fresh eyes.

I’ve named this piece Smell the Flowers. It started out as a charcoal sketch on canvas paper. I wanted to keep the pressure off and jump right onto a blank white canvas this time, rather than working on a toned surface. While I do really enjoy starting with a nicely coloured background or neutral grey, it was an additional step which meant I would then have to wait before beginning, but I didn’t want to lose any of the precious little time I had free that day.

Once I was happy with the positioning and proportions of the face and features, I used a coloured charcoal pencil to roughly sketch in some flowers to balance out the composition.

After mixing a couple of colours for the main areas of the face, looking for a middle tone rather than the highlights or shadow areas, I began to paint in the larger forms of the face, looking for shapes and shifts colour temperature, amending and mixing colour on the palette as I go.

Once the eyes are painted in the face starts to feel more complete. After leaving the painting to sit for a while, I c can come back and notice where colours need adjusting and forms need reshaping. This often has a knock-on effect meaning there is a bit of back and forth between moving paint around to bring features forward or backwards, softer or more prominent.

The last main part of the painting to do was the flower bunches and hair.