STAGE THREE

I used a grid to help me place the features roughly in the right place. I often use a grid for the first stage of the main painting. I find a grid helpful for getting the figure where I want it on the canvas. A grid will only give you a rough outline and is a helpful guide, but the skill of capturing expression, tone and form still rests in the later stages of a painting and requires careful observation of tone and colour, which a grid won’t help with. I used Winsor & Newton’s olive green to mark out the key features and for blocking in the darkest shadows as a first step for my underpainting. I use this fairly transparent colour because it goes on thinly and is harmonious with most other tones I use in a portrait. It also works well on linen canvas, which provides a ready-made mid-tone to work with. Once I have very roughly blocked in the darkest tonal areas, I will assess the painting to see whether there are any glaring errors in the emerging visual impression of light and form. To do this, I squint at the image, stand well back from the emerging work, and look at small thumbnails of my painting on my phone so that I can filter out the details and only see the largest tonal planes. At this stage, I try to notice some of the important elements of the likeness, paying particular attention to bone structure (rather than the details of features) the tilt of the head and posture