Lhanbryde art class Vincent and Monet.

Elaine has a remarkable eye for detail creating this stunning piece using slow drying oils.

Gill creates an expressive cuddly Monet that is very painterly.

Jean W creates a delicate painting of Monet, she works her colours out first and plans carefully.

Portessie girls drawings continued

Avril's Charcoal drawing.

Glynis's Charcoal drawing.

Margaret's pencil drawing.

Some of the homework the girls brought in today.  The more practice there is on the drawings the more it becomes clear.  They are starting their William portraits so there is plenty to concentrate on for the future project.  Portraits are unforgiving everything must be carefully planned and worked carefully on, unlike a landscape when you can get away with so much less information.  Good to see their hard work here today.

Vincent Van Gogh

As the Lhanbryde class start their Van Gogh self portrait, here are the first stages of my painting of him.  I used a 12 x 16 inch canvas and made the drawing. I had originally wanted to leave the canvas white as Vincent was said to do this so that the colours would remain nice and bright without having to compete with an earth toned primed canvas.  However after my drawing I decided to tone the whole canvas a naples yellow with white mixed in.  As Vincent often used a pastel primed canvas I thought I would try this too.  I didn't photograph this stage though.   I painted in the first stage of his jacket and as I was running out of time and didn't have many colours available for the flesh tones in oils, I decided to paint his hair and face in acrylics. This can easily be painted over in oils later on. The nice thing about doing it this way is that the acrylics dry very quickly. 

Monet Lhanbryde class new works

Jane's oil painting

Sandra's watercolour painting.

Monet class work Lhanbryde.

Angela step one and almost completed.

 Yvonne step one and final work.

 Jane 1st stage

 Sandra drawing then work in progress of her watercolour painting.

 1st and almost final stage of Elaine's oil painting.

Alison work in progress.

Monet Portrait

The various stages of building up the Monet painting using an acrylic base and using oils for the other stages. I still have to repaint the left side of his face, his beard, hat and clothing. I will tone down his mouth and beard with a warm glaze using blue with violet.
Materials.
For my brushes I used Lawrence art supplies (online) down in Hove they are very good and post off an order the same day.  They do an artists quality value brush for oil/acrylic painting, these are super brushes with a nice spring yet solid enough to do large areas such as the background.  I used a variety of brush sizes, the smallest being 0 and 1 for the eye detail. I painted the eyes in the second stage using acrylic which speeds up the drying time, finishing off later with oils.
I used a few colours for the portrait, these are my personal choice. Naples yellow, raw umber, titanium white, Italian Brown-pink Lake by Old Holland, French ultramarine blue, Transparent oxide red, by Michael Harding, rose madder lake extra by old holland, manganese violet reddish by old holland, hansa yellow deep by Gamblin, Cromatic black (transparent) by gamblin. sap green optional.
The artist quality oil paints can be bought at Lawrence art supplies, I have had the paints for a long time, the pigment is very powerful so you only need a small bit for a painting. You can also use a fast drying white oil paint to speed up your overall painting time. Some paints take longer to dry and white is one of the longest to dry. You can mix the fast drying white in with your ordinary paints to increase the drying time. Gamblin do a beautiful fast drying oil paint in a few colours but they are expensive.

Portessie Girls Portrait work

Everyone is concentrating hard to get an accurate portrait. Two of the girls use the grid method to get an accurate portrait.  The portraits are drawn in charcoal mostly charcoal pencils which are useful for detail work. Layering and blending using a highlight pencil.