West Ireland Farmer

Oil portrait painting of my father's cousin who works as a farmer in Ireland.

I used charcoal to get the basic outline and had one strong gesture line along the middle to mark the gesture of the piece. I was working from an image instead of from life so wanted to make it feel as real as possible.

My next step was to cover the canvas with basic colours that closely match the main tones of the piece. I was not too worried about detail or getting the exact right tones at this stage.

This is similar to the previous stage. I used white spirit to dilute some of the colours and blended some while on canvas.

I have mostly covered the canvas apart from the sky now. I can use this as a foundational layer now to apply the next tones in more detail. Comparing the value and hue of a tone compared to a similar colour is much easier than a strong white.

You can see here I have now added more tones and greater detail. I could finish here if I was aiming for a very impressionistic style painting but I prefer to add more detail especially in the face as that will be the main focal point.

This final stage involves all the small details but takes the most time. At this point I can paint for hours and not notice time passing. All the fine wrinkles, small strands of beard hair and eye brows slightly covering the eyes.

The overall painting took about 10 hours to complete and this was the final result.