Isaac underpainting

Isaac

I love all the little children in my neighborhood and Isaac is one of my favorites. I decided to paint his portrait as a gift this year for his parents.  

I thought it might be interesting to describe a bit of my technique, so I have included a photo of the under painting along with the final product. 

I began with a thin wash of color over the surface of the canvas using a light warm tone - in this case cadmium red.  Then I roughed in the shape of the head using more cadmium red, mixing in titanium white and burnt umber to establish shapes and the composition as well as lights and darks.  The paint was very fluid at this time and I easily moved shapes around until I was satisfied.  I added some yellow ochre to rough in his hair. I don't usually a do a drawing first.  I prefer to just work mass and color with the paint brush on the canvas rather than lines.

I then let the painting rest for a day or so before moving on to the actual painting of the subject.  When I came back to the painting I saw it with new eyes and made a few changes to the composition and colors.  I prefer to work the whole canvas at first rather than just one segment at a time.  Every artist has their way of doing things and this is a little bit of what I do when painting with oils.

Oils on canvas. 10" x 12". 2014.