Painting My Father's Cousin - An Irish Farmer (Photos of method step by step)

Hello everyone, I have been busy these last few weeks completing uni work during lockdown close approaching final deadlines. Hopefully I will post more often once I have finished mid May.

Today I want to share an oil portrait painting of my father's cousin who works as a farmer in Ireland. This was my submission for a contemporary painting competition called John Moore's painting prize. I think the painting may be too traditional for this competition but we will see if it goes any where in the next few months.

This was the final submission

Below I will share the process that went into creating it...
I have done a similar painting on a larger scale a few years ago showing his hands but wanted to do it again after improving my drawing and painting skills however, this time I did not get his hands in as he would have been too small on the canvas I was working on.

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. That involved a strong gesture study as a foundation and no grid lines/reference as reference as it makes the drawing too rigid.

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.

As you can see 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. They say eyes are the windows to the soul so eyes were one of the things I spent the longest amount of time on. They need to be perfect in order to show the persons character. I was up until 3am painting this as I did not want to stop the flow I was in.

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

I enjoy working with oils and aim to work with them more in future when I am satisfied with my drawing skill level. I find they are better than acrylics in creating expressive pieces with the correct colours and texture.

Thanks for checking out this post showing the process that went into it and all your support!

- Ian,