STAGE FIVE

For me, painting is a long and sometimes tortuous battle to find just the right tones and colour on the canvas, evolving and modifying as I go rather than mixing the right colour to start with. I started with a limited palette in order to simplify the choices I needed to make, and this also helped to achieve overall harmony and coherence later on in the painting. I began with Naples yellow (for light tones), olive green (for dark tones), cadmium red/vermilion and a little cobalt blue, cerulean blue, and white. I slowly added a few more colours to my palette as I got into the detail, such as indigo for the darkest tones, yellow ochre, and a lovely clay-like Michael Harding colour called unbleached titanium dioxide. I mixed all the colours I needed from this selection. I don’t use pre-mixed browns or blacks as I find it more harmonious to make these sorts of colours from my limited palette.

To find colours that would bring the work to life, I started to look for warm or cool areas. In the same way I compared different tones across the painting, I did the same with basic colour values, asking myself questions such as: How do the green tones at the back of the head compare to the green tones in the jumper – are they cooler or warmer? Are the greens more inclined towards reds or blues? Are there any areas where the tonal values are the same but the colours different? Are there any areas that seem to have similar colours – as is the case if you compare the top righthand part of the forehead with parts of the neck shadow and lower parts of the face. I kept modifying tones and colours in this way until I achieved the correct balance across all areas of the painting, always checking from one area to another. It’s a long process of pushing and pulling the colours while ensuring that the tonal hierarchy is not lost