Painting a portrait in oils
Livvy has been drawing and painting people professionally for nearly 30 years and trained at Heatherleys School of Portraiture & Figurative Art in London.
Livvy has always had a fascination with the human structure, and especially the face. She loves the fact that every face is totally unique and likes to delve into the essence of her subjects. She tries to inject emotion and drama into her portraits and prides herself on capturing their true likeness and character.
Her background is in design and illustration. She worked in London in the design and advertising industry until she moved to Hampshire 20 years ago. She now works full-time running regular drawing and painting courses and evening classes as well as working on portrait commissions in her studio.
To see more of Livvy’s work visit her website:-
Working from a photo we’ll be looking at the process of painting a portrait on canvas and how to produce a realistic and convincing end result
To start with we’ll be creating an underpainting to anchor the drawing and establish the different tonal values we’ll then looking placement of features, structure of the face, mixing flesh tones and how they are affected by light and shadow, painting hair and then refining the final details.
- Stretched canvas – suggested size 16 x 12 inch
- Low odour mineral spirits/ Turpentine
- Pallette – glass or wooden or disposable paper palettes
- Pallette knife
- Kitchen roll/old rags
- Apron
- Selection of paint brushes: fine sables for details, larger bristle brushes for broader strokes
- Oil paints, recommended colours are :
- Cadmium red
- Ultramarine blue
- Lemon Yellow
- Viridian Green
- Yellow ochre
- Raw umber
- Burnt sienna
- Lamp black
- Titanium white