Atul’s Life painting

Life in a Blue chair

This was an enjoyable life portrait painting project with Atul Vohora ( who also teaches at the Slade school and is published in Artists and Illustrators magazine).The project was set up with a focus on a strong visual relationship with the back ground colours and interesting physical structure. Of the two set ups, I choose this one, which had more foreshortening, a very strong warm/cold contrast and a strong sense of the light flooding across the figure and chair.

I had to work quickly because I missed 3 days of the project, it is a bit more rushed than I would have liked, which the picture echoes. In the last few projects I have been working with more layers and under painting than I used to. In this painting I overcame the problem of the texture of the under layers adversely effecting the top layer by scraping the layers back. Traditionally the under layers would be thinned, which i do not do because of the toxicity of the thinners. However, it did work well for me and I will continue with this approach. I also worked with some more less saturated colour than I usually do, which was helpful. It makes the more saturated colours come out more strongly and helps with the sense of depth in the picture.

Overall, I like the picture, which seems to balance my usual love of bright and more differentiated marks with the need, in this case, of making a reasonably realistic image.

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