This is a recent portrait commission that I've finished.I learned a lot about what I should and should not do in a painting, let me share with you:
The tooth of the canvas was a little to thick...
In trying to overcompensate for painting too thin, I got a thicker "tooth" canvas. This was a mistake, I could have worked on thicker painting just the same if I had been mindful, and had done it on a smoother canvas. Ultimately though, the affect is minimal. The painting is either good or it isnt, and the tooth is one of the finer points which isn't going to make or break it.
Drawing from life, painting from photo's...
We can't always work from life the way we want, where I went wrong in this was working first from life, with the drawing, and then working from a photo with everything else. Because I'm not an experienced painter I thought this would have been better for me in the working process. I was very wrong. In setting up sight size, I could have made important anatomical notes, and then done the finer details and shapes off of a photo. Because the client travels a lot, the time I did have with him would have then been spent getting color and form with the paint. I found this lesson out the hard way and ended up struggling more than I should. Draw from photo's, paint from life...if you have to.
Shadow's and background...
Need to be treated similarly, and painted thinner than the lights...duh...to be fair I did try to do this, but it wasn't successful. The background I loaded up with too much paint, to compensate for the thick canvas, and I didn't blend the shadow of the figure in with the background like I should to make the shadows seem more atmospheric.
Plains plains plains...
From having had to paint from photo's, a manner of compression happens in the shot, and the plains of the form are harder to read than from studying the sitter from life. Successful figure painting is in part being able to observe the plains of the form and to get those to read well with one another. As a painter, you will likely always struggle with this, I did because I'm not experienced and I chose the wrong way to go about working.
Expression of the sitter...
I have talked before about the boring and traditional academic portraits which litter the landscape of the painting world, where the sitters are completely void of expression, boring and lifeless. Well I had this in mind when painting this portrait, and I told Bill, to "think of something dirty..." when I was drawing him, and taking the reference shots. I feel like I got an expression which makes Bill look as if he's about to lean forward and share with you something that may just make you blush. Of all the problems with this portrait, I'm happy with the expression, and I'm happy to say that I was able to make the drawing better while painting.
Well, there we go. Lets just say, it could be worse, I wanted it to be brilliant, which it isn't but it's also not a complete disaster either.
