James Flynn

Hello again, I hope you have all been well...

It's been a busy time for me again lately, which is a good thing right?.....

Following the feedback I recieved from my exhibition recently, I have been producing a lot of black and white portraits. Mainly because these are what got the biggest responce, and perhaps more importantly because I absolutely love painting in black and white pastel!

I can safely say that if I ever had to choose just one way to paint for the rest of my days, I would choose black and white pastel straight away! I just love the simplicity of it, the high contrast marks you can make really appeal to me. Hence my latest portraits have been mainly in this medium.

So here is my latest portrait. The reference picture is basically a newspaper cutting that I found a while ago, which can be a good source of reference material. If you ever need to brush up on your portrait drawing/painting skills, buy a few newspapers and you should find plenty of reference pics in there!

I have taken a series of pictures at various stages for you to see....

OK, here is the beginning stage. The beginning is probably the most "scary" stage of any painting as you don't know which way it could go! Here I started to model the eyes and nose, and put down some lights and darks......

Next I started to stretch out over the face down to the mouth, and get the overall shape of the face put down. I usually work this way, working inside first, and then stretching outwards. I find it works best for me.

Here, as you can see I started to add some clothing. Never an easy thing to paint, but remember...the face is the focal point in a portrait more often than not, so you can get away with "loosely" painting this part.

Here I have worked the face some more. Making the dark areas darker, and the light areas lighter. The reason I chose to paint this picture is because of the great shadow across the face, and I wanted to really bring these lights and darks out.....

At this point, I am really hovering over the whole painting, adding bits here and there, adjusting things and adding detail. This is where I enjoy myself the most, and get in "the zone"!...

And finally, I have added some background here. Now believe it or not, this can be the hardest part of a portrait like this, finding a dramatic effect that brings out the portrait is an interesting process. I think I got away with this here!...

So there it is. I did have a slightly clearer picture to put up here but my computer has decided not to let me! So sorry about that....

I finished this painting fairly quickly, over a few hours or so, which is another appealing quality of this medium, you don't have to spend days and days on your artwork (unless you want to of course). Let me know what you think, I always love a bit of feedback. And if you end up doing a few yourself, email me your pics and I might just put them up on here in a new post....

Speak soon,

James Flynn