Portrait of Tom

Hooray! The portrait of Tom is finally complete and ready for the Easter break. I'm really pleased with it now but it has been a battle: I had trouble with the shirt as the original photo had his shoulder up, causing the shirt to crease in a way that looked wrong with the shoulder down. Tom had kindly sent lots of photos of him in different shirts but I wanted the colours to complement the portrait I previously painted of Linda. A plain shirt looked too plain so I opted for a green check and ended up re-painting the lines about five times. I even resorted to getting my husband to model a stripy shirt for me so I could work out how the creases fell and how the contours of the check pattern would work. That'll teach me!! Obviously the main part of the portrait is Tom's face and particularly his eyes so most of the glazed layers of paint went into his face - the shadows and laughter lines. This goes through a process of darkening areas then smoothing them into the surrounding area using a series of scumble glazes. These glazes range from bright purple, red and orange to dark brown, grey and green. Green works surprisingly well in the shadows although it looks pretty scary when first applied - Tom was the Incredible Hulk for a time! It has been sitting on my easel for a while as I have been tweaking the background, the shirt, adding a few more grey hairs to Tom (and to me) but I'm really pleased with the final outcome and hope Tom feels the same.