I have been working on this portrait of my stepsister and her husband for over a year now as I wanted to experiment with different styles and mediums - that was the deal! Most off the experiments with coloured glazes, vignettes, textures have not worked as I'd hoped but I have learned a lot in the process including how to wipe everything back and repaint! I started off working in acrylics for the background and then started to paint the couple in grayscale with oils as my aim was to keep it fairly muted and duotone, like an old sepia photo. They looked too ghostly so I decided to add colour - you can see in photos 3 - 6 how glazes of burnt sienna, then cadmium red and crimson, followed by cadmium yellow and then white have been added to the whole canvas but focusing on the faces. This brought the skintones to life a bit so I decided to play with the background - I darkened it, lightened it, played with the tonal balance, made tonal sketches, added texture, removed texture, played around with brighter colours - all looked awful so I scraped it back each time! Then they sent through photos of their newly decorated room which was blue and turquoise so I realised the colours I was currently painting wouldn't work. I played with these colours but it looked like a Vegas poster. Finally I decided the textured background and painterly treatment on their faces wasn't in keeping with the subject of a formal wedding pose so I scraped that back and carried on blending. I knocked back the abstract background and painted something more natural looking while continuing to work on their faces. I'm now much happier with the painting, and more importantly, so are they!! Great to have the luxury of trying out new ideas and techniques, some of which I'll return to...
×