My First Portrait in Oils

14 September 2020 / New Artwork . Portraits . Uncategorized . Workshops

Last week I was lucky enough to take part in an Oil Portrait workshop with Jamie Brown, who I met a couple of years ago during the Bluethumb Exhibition. Jamie is a pro in Oil Portraits and uses the medium without Terps. That was important for me as I am allergic to the terp fumes.

James also introduced us to the Zorn Colour Palette. The Zorn palette  consists of just 4 colors being yellow ochre, ivory black, cadmium red and titanium white. It is names after Anders Zorn (18 February 1860 – 22 August 1920), a Swedish artist. This palette is ideal for portrait paintings, but requires some addition for landscape painting as there is no vivid green in this palette.

James also prefers to paint on 3.1mm MDF board instead on canvas and had a board prepared for everyone to use. We all worked on the same portrait, also provided by James.

We had only 3 hours allocated for the workshop and I never believed that I would finish it during that time.

To my big surprise everyone finished their portrait during the 3 hours and I was very please with my results as this was my first time I used oils in a portrait.

Now I was interested how I would handle the same portrait in acrylic. ANd I must admit that the iols were a lot easier to blend. But I am still quite happy with the acrylic version of Jamie’s portrait

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