Heads

I am painting a number of portraits at the moment. They are strangers from photographs taken in Northallerton. I'm taking a slightly different approach with these than I normally do. Most of my paintings tend to be landscapes, and I start off with a notan style blocking in of the main composition of masses, with very little drawing involved, certainly at the very first stage. I then work into the masses, lifting out lighter areas, refining the shapes, before applying values and colours. This works ok for landscapes, and I have used it fairly successfully with portraits, but recently I have done more drawing (with thinned down paint). These are loosely shaded as a grisaille, and then the values and colours worked in, working in decreasing masses. It is good fun. 

Painting portraits is forcing me to look closer at values, temperature and colour. I think this will have real benefits when I go back to painting landscapes, which I'm sure I will at some point. 

I feel like I've made good progress this summer, because I have painted almost everyday. The problem is going to be sustaining this as we go back to work next week, get a German exchange student, a dog,  move house, renovate the house...

 Early sketch..

 Basic grisaille.. 

 Establishing vales and colours..

 Starting to get there..

 Detail.

Finished.