Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

I had a model(Autumn) this evening for a couple of hour sitting.  I did a monochrome oil portrait instead of using the colors because I don’t like to use colors without the natural daylight.  I find it very difficult to distinguish correct color hue and saturation without the natural light, so I only paint with full colors during the daylight hours.

I wanted to do a charcoal drawing but i had run out of papers, so I decided to do a painting using only the burnt umber.As usual, I started this oil portrait by dabbing on globs of thick paint as if a sculptor would start attaching large pieces of clay to start his clay model. From there I proceeded to gradually define the form and modelling the head. I started out focusing on the large forms and shapes and worked towards smaller details, inserting the eyes, and the other features, then working on more details within those features.

I evaporated outward from the face to cover up the entire canvas, adding more details and important indications. I smoothed out and blended a lot of the areas of the face and also increased the value range to give more contrast, by hitting the darkest darks accents in the eyes as well as lightest light highlights on the tip of the nose, etc. Even though I pretty much overed up the entire surface of the canvas, I consider this just a lay-in. I have asked Autumn to come back so I can refine and polish up on this oil portrait some more.