Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

I did a portrait painting of Kenta today. I wanted to a pencil drawing, but ended up doing a painting again. I always feel like I need more practice on painting, so I always change my mind at the last minute. Also painting is more fun.

Kenta sat for about three hours. I really loved the way how her eyes stood out from her dark skin tone. Kind of reminded me of portraits by Nicolai Fechin, where he really exaggerates the whites of the eyes against the dark skins of his sitters.

Instead of doing a pencil drawing for the lay-in, I used a large brush, as I find it easier when you prefer to draw with values instead of lines. I roughly indicated the general gesture of her head and placed it onto the canvas, thinking about the overall composition of the portrait painting. I marked a vertical line around the middle to indicate the rough center of the face.

I then began laying in some tones to model the forms more and roughly indicate the facial features. I also tried to figure out where the light is coming from and how it is hitting the surface of the head. I also used some dark values to indicate the outlines of the face.

After I felt somewhat comfortable with my rough lay-in. I decided to start throwing on some colors. I began by mixing the colors for the shadow areas of the portrait painting, using burnt umber, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, cadmium read, alizarine crimson, and white. I made sure that the mixture is the averaged out tone of the whole shadow side of the face, so I can just block in the entire area with that hue, despite the fact that there are lot more colors and other variations happening within the region. Averaging out and blocking in is a very smart way to paint, as it omits the unnecessary details that may slow you down.

I continued to paint in the colors, defining the forms. Then I began painting in the light side of the face. I inserted the eyes into the eye-socket as if a sculptor would. Even though I was throwing on thick opaque paints, I still was able to rely on my previous lay-in/understructure and kept adding the features on top of it.

I kept modeling the face more and more, and when the whole face was pretty much covered with opaque paints, I started to indicate the other areas, such as the outlines of the hair, and the torso.

I continued defining the portrait painting, filling the whole canvas surface with thick paints. I then went back to the face and worked on it some more.

In this last stage of the portrait painting, I basically blended and polished everywhere, focusing mostly on the face. I also added more details and tightened up the face. I introduced more planes to the shadow side of the face, instead of just leaving it transparent and simplified. I used some cool temperatured colors on the shadow side to indicate those planes. I found the left side plane of her forehead to be significantly cool, almost blue, so I used the cereaulean blue to indicate that plane and was surprised by the difference it made, making the head really turn with sculptural effect.

I would have liked to keep working on this portrait painting, blending and polishing it more, experimenting with various oil painting techniques, but the natural light was starting to fade, so decided to end the session.