Portrait Painting in Acrylics

 

Painting the Shirt

The underpainting of the shirt was built up with glazes of titanium white to create a luminous background onto which the darker tones of the folds were applied. Fortunately, the original pencil drawing was still visible through the underpainting and the form of the folds were easily outlined with a fine brush in grey. Finally, the soft texture of the material was suggested by using a transparent grey glaze (equal mixtures of red, yellow and blue ) that was carefully blended with small sable brushes.

 

Painting the Waistcoat

The underpainting of the waistcoat was done in yellow medium azo. Next, the stripes inside the waistcoat were simply painted with several glazes of sap green to create a flat, even lines. The tones of the folds on the rest of the garment were rendered with glazes of sap green by gradually building up more layers to deepen the shades of the darkest areas.

 

Finally, the excessively bright yellow front of the waistcoat was subdued with several thin glazes of sap green. Glazes of prussian blue were then applied to deepen the tones the darkest areas.

 

In our actual size detail above, you can see the tonal, textural and colour effects of the paint surface on our shirt and waistcoat.

You can see that the folds on the shirt have been created by minute stippling with the grey glaze. The darker tones are more densely stippled than the lighter ones.

A similar painting technique is used for the softer folds of waistcoat. The dark tones of these folds were built up with stippled and smudged layers of of sap green. Prussian blue was then added to create the areas of deepest shade. Finally several transparent glazes of sap green were evenly stippled overall to subdue the luminous yellow front of the waistcoat. The resultant soft felt texture of the cloth was a by-product of this technique.