TONY JACKSON ARTIST

           TONY JACKSON          ARTIST

                                       

                             Examples of recent portraits

 

 

 

  

Alex and Friend - Acrylic on canvas , 20 x 16 ins


Three photos, the boy, the dog and a separate photo of the boy's eyes, were used to roughly block out the composition in pencil. Squaring up was used to aid the basic drawing.
The main areas of darker tones were painted in thin ultramarine blue.

More ultramarine and some white were used to build up the range of tones. Not too much attention was paid at this stage to precise drawing. The broad tonal values across the painting were the main focus.

Accuracy of drawing was pursued using smaller brushes and a more careful approach, but still using just the same two colours.The aim was to get the tonal values sorted before the problems of colour were thought about.

The first transparent washes of other colours were added, cadmium orange, yellow ochre, crimson, vermilion.

More colours were washed in, as above but with some cerulean blue. The problem of the boy's eyes had to be addressed, since the main photo of the face had downcast eyes, which wasn't wanted by the client. It was decided to keep using this photo for a while and re-photograph the boy as soon as possible

As above, but with more layers of yellow and orange.

New photographs were taken, and the face was redrawn from one of them.Layers of each colour were built up further.

The dark background was not liked by the client and changed to medium blue. More work was done on all aspects of the painting.

The painting was worked to a higher level of finish using each colour and white, often with a small nylon brush. Finally, several layers of satin acrylic varnish were applied to the canvas and it was presented to and accepted by the client.