Painting Background First Before Portrait,
50Background first, oil on paper. With this painting, I tried something different in terms of process. It happened by accident though - the first outline I did was too big, and didn’t capture the entire subject. I wanted to do a figure study, but the first outline was so big it really would have been almost my usual head and shoulders portrait. I considered just grabbing another piece of paper, but my cheapness took hold and I decided to just wipe it with a paper towel and paint over it.
Since I already had paint down, and it wasn’t the outline I was going to use, I decided to try an approach I’ve seen other artists use for alla prima oil painting. And that is, to apply the background first, with some rough space for the subject. That is the opposite of my usual approach, which is to fill in the background towards the end. But I’ve long been fascinated with the “background first” method, so this was fun to try something new.
After trying it this way, it seems there are some pros and cons. The biggest benefit is that, by doing the background first, you don’t have to do extra work at the end to clean up. When I save the background for the end, I then have to reapply hair, clothing, and facial edges and boundaries. Not a huge deal, but it is an extra step that you don’t have to mess with if you just do the background first. The downside though is that I found myself veering into “mud-mixer” mode (to quote Bob Ross). In other words, I had too much wet paint, and sometimes had difficulty distinguishing separate color zones.
Overall, it was a fun experiment! I would like to try this approach again at some point.
💻For more artwork by Jon Amdall, check out Amdall Gallery at https://jonamdall.com/
Colors Used:
⬛️ Raw Umber (Gamblin 1980)
⬜️ Titanium White (Utrecht Studio)
🟨 Yellow Ochre (Gamblin 1980)
🟥 Cadmium Red Hue (Utrecht Studio)
🟥 Alizarin Crimson (Utrecht Studio)
🟧 Blush (Gamblin 1980)
🟫 Burnt Umber (Utrecht Studio)
🟫 Burnt Sienna (Utrecht Studio)
🟦 Ultramarine Blue (Utrecht Studio)
🎨 Blick Oil Paints: https://www.tkqlhce.com/click-100750047-14333547?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dickblick.com%2Fcategories%2Fpainting%2Foil%2Fpaint-sets%2F
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