From the category archives:

portrait

About Face

 So you’ve covered the canvas.  The portrait is done, right? Not quite.  After the lay-in is complete,  it’s time to step back and looks at the painting.  The best question that you can ask yourself at the start of each studio session is, “What is the goal of this painting?”  In this case, the goal is to produce [...]

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The Lay-in

So the canvas is ready.  You put out your paint. Now what? How and where do you begin?  It’s time for the lay-in, or block in. It’s the term used for the first round of paint to go on the canvas I try simplify the image as best I can to start with.  No amount [...]

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Preparing to Paint

I think that it’s important for an artist to prepare there own canvas.  Most commercially produced canvases are cotton.  I don’t find cotton to be the best surface to paint on.  It can be effected by the weather, and is often very coarse.  Linen is my preferred surface.  I will be painting on a very fine quality linen for [...]

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Charcoal Compostion Study, the design takes shape.

After the design has been decided upon, a full size charcoal, or cartoon,  is produced.  This gives me a chance to really workout the composition on the actual scale and size that the final painting will be completed on.  The figure seen in the portrait are drawn at an approximate life size.  After the cartoon [...]

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The Gouache Study

This is one of several studies that I completed for this current project.  It was painted on white paper with limited pallet of gouache paint.  Gouache is similar to watercolor. Both are water based. Gouache is different in that it is opaque.  In watercolor, it is the white of the paper that you see through [...]

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The Beginning of a Portrait

So it’s time to paint a portrait.  How exactly do you do that?  Through this blog, I’ll be showing the steps along the way to a commissioned portrait.  As always, questions and comments are welcomed!  My portrait work can be viewed along with my other work on this site at http://www.jeffreysmithart.com/gallery.php Please click here to [...]

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