Portrait - conveying character

I decided to work from photo references for this exercise having discovered how difficult it is to capture a smile when working from life. Continuing a theme of using family members and their partners as source material, I have used my son's fiance as the model. My aim was to capture her open expression.

In an attempt to identify key features that expressed that part of her character, I prepared some studies using tracing paper and pen. To bring these sketches alive I added colour to the back of the tracing paper so the pen marks would still be visible. The result was cartoon like images with the pen marks too even and not differentiating/subtle enough. I then worked in pencil using different views trying to identify tone. I found the top left image most life like as I had taken more trouble over measuring proportions.

From these preparatory studies I felt the frontal pose expressed the character best. Using my sketch book I checked my proposed composition and tonal intentions.

Working on a prepared acrylic paper support, I sketched out the portrait with burnt umber washes indicating tonal variations. I found that this looser style of setting out the portrait with washes was freer and flowed better than working with undiluted pigments on a portrait sketched in chalk, as I had with my last exercise. Continuing to use washes I started to add skin and hair colour then worked on the clothes and background.

In order to improve the contrast between the portrait and background I over-laid ultramarine to the earlier background washes, mixing white into the blue where I wanted to lighten the tone. I was then able to start adjusting the portrait hues from hair to clothes bringing out greater depth and contrast.

The skin tones were the last to be adjusted. I have found that by leaving my paintings for a few days before the final washes and marks are added I have time to compare my draft work with the reference pieces and enhance tonality and expression. The result shown below has produced more depth to the face, better tonal representation of the hair and life to the eyes.

Comparing my head and shoulders portraits, I found the last two exercises most successful. I believe I had achieved more confidence by this stage in mixing skin tones and drawing directly onto the support in light washes. Also being restricted in available time to work from life, I have found the use of photo referencing suits my circumstances and allows greater opportunity to capture fleeting expressions or to exaggerate features. Technically the changing light and sitter's comfort working in natural daylight from life was very challenging particularly as I feel self conscious of my slowness whilst I build confidence with colour mixing and my mark making.

I have observeded other artist's work at various galleries, in books and on-line during this project and am still discovering different, new and interesting expressive techniques I intend to experiment with as time allows. I have captured some examples of these works in my sketchbooks for inspiration but accept these are only limited reproductions of the original works. I have yet again experienced why some artists can spend a lifetime studying and exploring a single theme.