Following on from my last post where I wrote about how important ‘drawing for the sake of it is’ in my practice, I was also thinking last week about how important drawing is as a tool for improving my painting skills.

I often think that drawing as seen as ‘secondary’ somehow and folks only need to look at my studio walls to see what I think of that idea! I spend an awful lot more time drawing than I do painting.

As well as the pure enjoyment of simple materials and the very direct nature of making marks on raw paper, drawing somehow helps me understand things better when I am getting into a bit of a pickle with paint. Yep, it happens all the time. Even more so now that I am currently working in oil paints. Whilst they are gorgeous and rich and tactile, it is all too easy to create mud where colours and tones get confused as I move the paint around with my brushes and get into a fine old mess. (Thank goodness for painting knives which I use regularly to scrape back to raw canvas when I cross that thin line between expressive brush strokes and losing the image completely).

I am working on a few pieces simultaneously at the moment (some acrylics and some oil paintings and as always, drawings) and last week, working on this portrait I got to the point where I had just lost the middle portion of the face. The harder I tried the more of a mess I was creating. So back to the drawing board – quite literally. I realised I was just not understanding the structure of the nose accurately enough to be able to render it in paint – the downside of working from images as opposed to life where the structure is much more clear. But a quick tonal, expressive sketch and the penny dropped. I was able to see the areas of shadow and light much more clearly so that I could use the brushstrokes to carve that shape out from the canvas.

This portrait again is inspired by a posespace image – I use them as a starting point only, in order to figure out the lighting and the structure of the head rather than trying to copy the photo exactly. Even my drawing is very different from the image but I feel the elements help me to create a good foundation so that I can then bring my own expression and aesthetic to the canvas.

This painting is also a study for a much larger painting that I am now working on which I will post about next week.

Shop Update: I have not had any artwork available online since before we moved in February so it was about time I took an inventory of what I have available. I have been gradually listing pieces in my online store and also decided to finally get to grips with my portfolio on Saatchi Online selling my first piece on there last week.

The above portrait will be added once it is dry enough to varnish.

Workshop Update: I am currently writing (and about to start filming) my brand new ecourse which will be focused entirely on portraiture (drawings and paintings!) I will have more information soon! But I am very excited about it. Taking some of the elements I covered in Unearth Gather Create and Drawn to Expression and expanding on them, it goes even further into the subject of creating portraits with entirely new content and in-depth study. If you would like to learn more about the upcoming course as information becomes available then you can sign up to my workshop mailing list on my Art School site (in the sidebar). Registration will open in a couple of weeks and class will begin in October.

Till next time ….