Chartwell

Chartwell in Kent was Churchill's home for many years and now belongs to the National Trust.

Night Scene

The  Lea Valley Art Society's theme this week was 'night scene', which inspired me to paint this picture, using a daytime photo of London as a loose reference. I particularly like the deep blue of the sky, for which I mixed teal, cobalt and ultramarine blue.

Portrait Artist of the Week

The Portrait Artist of the Week streaming programme on Facebook came to an end on Sunday with Mary Beard as the final sitter and Selena Mowat as the artist painting her portrait live.


This is my portrait of Mary Beard in watercolour.

To my mind, a common mistake in painting teeth is to make them too white, which makes them look unnatural. I toned them down with a mix of raw sienna, cerulean blue and a touch of alizarin crimson.

I am quite happy with the likeness I achieved.

The previous Sunday, rap artist Professor Green was the sitter, painted by the brilliant Tom Mead.
I knew I wanted to include his distinctive tattoo in the portrait. An added challenge was the position of the head, viewed from below, which changes the proportions of the face.

The week before that, Clare Balding sat for Aine Divine, an excellent and inspiring watercolour artist. Here is my version:

I painted Clare from a screen shot and misinterpreted the shape of her earring but decided to leave it as I liked the shape.


The sitter of the following portrait is Noel Fielding, who sat for Kimberly Klauss. 
In my version, I incorporated elements from Noel's own painting in the background. (The whites in this photo have a blue cast, which I wasn't able to correct).

What have I learnt from this experience? Most of all, that it doesn't get any easier with practice and that surprisingly, it took me longer to complete the paintings as the weeks went on. For every portrait, one starts from scratch in working out the proportions of the face and in struggling for a likeness.

It has been an enriching experience and will remain one of the positive memories of the lockdown period. 

Will Young portrait

Will Young watercolour painting

This is the latest painting of the facebook streaming event created by Artist of the Year for Sky Arts TV.

I found the lighting challenging with lighting from both sides of the face. Another thing I struggled with was the likeness which I am still not sure I have achieved. The likeness usually appears gradually during the painting process and when it doesn't, it's hard to retrace one's steps to see where one went wrong.

Chris Hook was the professional artist who painted on the day, one of my favourite winners of Portrait Artist of the Year. His portraits are both accurate and freely painted.

Rankin and Rob Rinder Portraits

This weekly event by Sky Arts TV on Facebook has become a welcome fixture for my Sunday mornings. The sitters of the last two weeks were photographer Rankin and tv personality Robert Rinder.

Rankin

Rob Rinder

I found painting in watercolour a lot more difficult than the pencil portraits I did the two previous weeks, which surprised me, as watercolour is my medium of choice. I assume working in colour and not just tone added an extra challenge.

With both portraits, I built the layers up to start with and then, towards the end, lifted paint to create lighter tones.

Overall, I am pleased with the likeness I have achieved in both portraits. My way of working is to start with the big shapes of the head and finish with the mouth and eyes. 

We may mistakenly think that it's the eyes that make a person recognisable, as we naturally focus on them, but it is the general shapes of the head that create a likeness. If those are wrong, then an accurately painted eye makes no difference.

Tree blossom

Another painting inspired by our daily walks. We still go out in all weathers to connect with life around us, which is so important in this time of isolation. 

Painting white flowers (this photo shows them too dark) is a challenge in watercolour as the white is the unpainted paper, and one can be tempted to go in too dark and lose the delicacy of the flowers. 

Pencil Portraits

Akram Khan

Bernardine Evaristo

This was the second Sunday that Sky TV broadcast a live paint along on their facebook page.  It lasted for four hours, but I found that I completed both portraits in half the time. 

Last Sunday's sitter was the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan, painted by Portrait Artist finalist Christabel Blackburn; and this morning, the author Bernardine Evaristo posed for Duncan Shoesmith, an artist whose style I really like. He models the face with blocks of paint without too much blending.

I managed to draw Akram Khan from life, as he kept really still, but this Sunday, I had to resort to a still image because Bernardine was moving a lot more. I did notice however, that further into the four hours, she was sitting still for longer.

For both drawings, I used 2B pencils on A3 cartridge paper in landscape orientation. I drew in the centre line of the face and placed horizontal lines for the eyes, the bottom of the nose, the mouth and the bottom of the chin. The only measuring I did was the placement of the mouth in relation of the chin, which in both cases was about a third of the distance from the bottom of the nose to the chin. 

Sky Arts have created this programme because at the moment, they can't film Portrait Artist of the Year 2021 because of social distancing rules. I am very grateful to them for creating an interactive programme where artists can make art together.