Exercise 5 Head and shoulder portrait

exploring the head &
face

For this portrait I decided from the start to try a profile.My sitter was wearing a teal blue shirt and there was a light neutral coloured background, containing a picture and a mirror on the wall, a lamp and a dado rail running from one side to the other. I began with a few sketches in line and tonal sketches.
The first part of the painting was monochromatic black, greys and white - a grisaille underpainting in acrylic to work out the tonal variations. Oils were used for the remainder of the painting.
I used round brushes more than I usually do and found them flexible, the small ones useful for detail. Also a long flat size 8 in the shirt area, but later reverted back to the usual flats, as I just feel more comfortable with them. I put the background elements in to give just a vague suggestion of what's there as I wanted the figure to be more prominent.

1 underpainting

2 

I used a complementary scheme of prussian blue and cadmium red and yellow. The blue colour of the sitter's shirt was roughed in first and was quite quick to do. The colours I used in the first mix for the face and neck  were very yellow. Initially I intended to use an unrealistic skin colour for the skin thinking it would add interest, but changed my opinion when I saw it after application. The fact that it made the model look jaundiced didn't help. I rubbed most of it off with a turpsy rag and instead mixed in more cadmium red approximating something nearer to the model's own colouring, although it was still going to be quite orange. I didn't mind this. Some quite dry brushwork was used around the beard area and it mixed with the still wet colours beneath. I applied the darker medium tones to early  so it wasn't until well advanced with also the light a dark tones on the face that I could reallysee whether the medium tone looked convincing.

3 Initial finished painting

After completing the background in blue/green tones the blue tone of the shirt appeared to isolated so I added some of the background colours with more prussian blue added to help pick up the green tones of the background. I seemed a lot of mixing in this painting. Midtones of the blue/greens from the background and shirt were added to the hair to highlight the light from the window behind me and at the same time show reflected colours - I quite like the way they do this. When I thought I was finished I suddenly noticed dark tones of the ears looked to hard, so softened them with touches of lighter flesh tones after they had dried so as not to pick up the dark paint from underneath. This was a big improvement. The ears were amongst others areas (mouth and eye) I fiddled around with for ages to try and get a convincing representation. As I wasn't happy to stop painting when my time with the sitter had run out, I finished off some of the finer details with the help of  a couple of photos.
 Looking at the painting later  I feel that the beard needs more suggestion of directional growth and a little more volume is needed in the hair over the forehead. Although the face has reflected the light from the window, I think the central part of the cheek could be blended more with surrounding tones and the whole face and neck might benefit from a glaze or two to tone it down. Funnily enough, the sitter seemed to be pleased with the results and said that he thought it was a good likeness.
As my tutor suggested, I could benefit from investigating skin tones further and to examine those of Euan Uglow's figure paintings. Indeed I did look closely at them, but wasn't able to find anything about the palette/s he normally uses. This is quite an old self portrait from 1964:
http://ruthborchard.org.uk/collection/euan-uglow/
So, I took some advice from a more experienced painter I know, especially of portraits, who also suggested using liquin as a glaze
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/reginacarbayo/9365470043/
I went over the skin tones, basing them loosely on Velasquez palette:

 4 After alterations -
photograph lower quality than
the first (above)

black, light red, yellow ochre and white. I had no black so I mixed something approximating black - prussian blue and burnt umber. For the head, facial and neck hair I also used a mix of phthalo green and scarlet lake. I know from what little experience I have, how much time can be wasted by using the wrong colour mixes and tone - it looks so obvious in the skin, if the idea is to obtain something convincing. I soon discovered that to obtain more accuracy I had to play down the tones slightly more than the first mixes. I mixed liquin into the later applications, this was more to help speed up the drying time than anything else. As paint becomes more transparent when liquin is combined with it, so becomes a glaze, I found it had great potential to add quite delicate transparency and  to light skin tones, although in my case I think it was rather crudely handled.
The areas I altered were to further soften the shadow to the ear, and general toning down of skin colour. The beard carefully rendered the beard to soften the transition between the beard and the skin The hair has been painted over the skin around the neck as the skin looked before like it growing over the hair. More hair has been added to the top of the forehead. I used thin wispy strokes all over the head hair to blend in with the extra chunk added to the front of the forehead using a mix of mostly phthalo green and scarlet lake and a small amount of the same was added to the top of the shirt for reflections and shadows. I do think there is an improvement in the skin and hair now, though I can't help thinking of stage make-up when I look at the face.