Percy, life study, oil 18 x 14

Have I mentioned lately how much I love painting at the Mountain Artists' Guild Open Studios?

Dorothy Ray brought in another wonderful model, Percy, who is a portrait/figurative painter himself.

Here are the in-process step pics I took during the session.

Ignore the color notes on the lower left - I painted over a previous demo, having reconditioned the canvas with a fairly thick layer of Holbein's Foundation Greenish. While it covered the underlying paint, the surface was very slick, so that getting the paint, especially the first layer to stick was a challenge. And of course in a 3 hour session, nothing dries so I had to fight my 'direct' tendencies - light touch isn't something that comes naturally to me at the easel.

Percy was lit from the upper right with a color-corrected (probably 5500 K) artificial light, augmented by a very delicate natural blue light coming in from our left.

Painting Whit: Step by step in open studio

My friend Whit modeled one day at the Prescott Mountain Artists' Guild Gallery while I was in the process of writing "Classic Portrait Painting in Oils". Recently, he reminded me  to send him some of the pics taken that day, and I thought I'd also share them here.

Below, one of the images of Whit from my book, showing how I evaluated my skin tone mixture by comparing it right against his skin.

Here is the studio set -up:

 

I took several in-process photos during our model breaks to show progress. Below, Step 1, placing and measuring to begin the drawing; separating light from shadow; and committing to the background.

Step 2: covering the canvas, roughing in skin tones in both light and shadow.

Step 3: building up paint; refining the drawing (always); and setting up the surface to accept Whit's beard.

Whit, final.