Tony Jackson - Portrait Technique

Tony's acrylic paintings evolve from an approximate tonal sketch done in ultramarine blue and white. This is built up in those tones to resolve the drawing and lighting problems. Colour is added mostly in thin washes of other primary colours.

Saturday, 10 March 2007


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.
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About Me

studied painting at Bath Academy of Art, (1963-66). He then worked as an Art Teacher in secondary schools for 30 years, and was the Director of Expressive Arts at a school in Hemel Hempstead where he lives. He took early retirement in 1996 to concentrate on his painting, the development of Adult Education classes in Art and Design, and painting demonstrations and workshops for art societies across the south of England. His demonstrations and workshops on portraits, landscape, still life and studies of life in India are mostly about the use of acrylics and pastels. His technique can be summed up as “producing a tonal painting in blue and white which is turned into a full colour image with washes of primary colours”. Most of Tony’s recent work has been naturalistic, featuring scenes of life in India, though recently he has done many abstract works and taken on a number of portrait commissions.He has exhibited in Hertfordshire, London and Calcutta.