Art & Design Level 3 Extended Diploma: Oil painting 2

I decided to experiment with oil paints and portraiture as this is something I have not experimented with before, I waned to try to mix realistic skin tones and mid tones. As this piece was an experiment I painted this piece on paper.

I first started by sketching in the basic face shapes using a coloured pencil, I then refined this slightly till I felt. I had the face shape correct. Once I had drawn the basic face I then blocked in the darkest areas using a large paint brush, I also refined these slightly and started adding highlights. Once the main blocks of tone and shadow were added I mixed a series of skin tones in oil and blocked these in roughly till I was happy with the shape of the face and the overall tone of the piece.

Once I was happy with the overall facial features I then started adding more precise tone to the features to make them appear more realistic.

This gave me a base to add the detail, I used a very fine brush to add detail to the piece around the eye, nose and lip area. I also used a relatively small brush to fill in the hair.

For my second piece (final outcome) I wanted to experiment with more surreal colour schemes, for this I started by creating a base to work on, for this I selected the background colours I wanted from the artists work I was most inspired by; Jen Mann. I took images of her work into a paint store which scanned in the images in order to mix the correct colours. I bought two tester pots to prime my canvases with. The colours I selected were a pale shade of blue and a pastel pink. I first primed my canvas using these colours and then I protected the image I wanted to use onto my canvas and used a mechanical pencil to draw in the image.

I them mixed a series of different colours which complimented these colour schemes; blues on pink, pinks on blue. Using a similar technique to before I used these colours to block in the main bulk using s large brush including the shadows and highlights. I them began to refine this will smaller brushes until I finally added the detail using a fine brush around the face and hair, including the eyes, eyebrows, lips and hair. This draws attention to the face itself, making the face the main point of interest in the piece.