Since the last blog post I have continued my weekly portrait painting lessons . These consist (for the moment, at least) of copying work by some of the great artists, such as this one:
(My painting is on the right, if it wasn’t obvious.)
And also this one, which I think is based on an original by Sargent:
This kind of exercise seems to be paying dividends as I used some of what I have learned to produce my own work, such as this portrait of my grandparents.
This was quite a challenge. It was a Christmas gift for my grandmother so I wanted to get it right! It was also the first time I had tackled a double portrait, so I had to get each likeness correct and also have the size of each person correct relative to the other.
The early stages of the painting didn’t go particularly well and it took a few attempts before I had the proportions correct. The partially complete underpainting is shown below.
As is often the case, I had to plough through the ‘sticky bits’ before the painting started to really come together.
I was very pleased with the end result (as was my Gran!), I think it’s my best portrait to date and obviously, being of my family, it does hold a special meaning.