A PORTRAIT of My Wife, Rachel - 3 part PROCESS in Oils!

In this video, we're going to be painting this portrait and I'm going to share with you a time lapse of the process. Roll that intro. Hi there and welcome to the studio. My name's Andrew. It is such a pleasure to have your company here once again. And if you're new here, this is the place where we talk about all things to do with art and oil painting. So consider subscribing. Now, in this video, I want to share with you a time lapse process of this portrait that I painted of my wife, Rachel. I'm going to give you an overview of the process and the various stages that I went through when painting this portrait. And then we're going to get stuck into a time lapse, a nice chilled out painting session with a bit of background music. But before we do, I just want to let you know about something right now in that description box down below, you're going to find a link to my painting portraits oil painting workshop. Now, this portrait workshop has got six different demonstrations showing you different types of skin, different hair, all kinds of different technical approaches to painting the portrait. I go over how to construct the portrait from those initial lines, building up the surface, creating a three dimensional form, and then putting in those final details. Now, if you want to take your portrait painting even further in 2022, then make sure you check out this workshop. It's available as a DVD or an instant download. And again, you'll find it by clicking that link in the description down below. Now, I actually started this painting in a different way than I normally go about doing things. I started at the end of the process with the frame. I was in a store randomly. I saw this amazing antique frame and then it hit me. I got this idea. I've got to paint Rachel in this frame. How beautiful would that look? And you might notice here that it's an odd shape. I made a custom panel, an oval shape to match the void of the frame. This panel was made out of 18 mil marine ply. I primed the back of the plywood and then stretched linen over the surface of the ply using just PVA glue to stick the linen down. I made sure I was pressing any air bubbles out of that linen and then I stretched around the back and drove staples in just to make sure it was really nice and tight. Now, I let this panel dry for a few days before getting out my oil paints. And even before I start painting the portrait, I give it a toned wash of just some burnt umber with turpentine. And I rub this back thoroughly before laying in those initial colors. Now, here's my reference material. This photograph was taken of Rachel a few years ago when she was attending her friend's wedding. I thought she'd look just so amazing and I've actually posed her in front of a window with that beautiful natural light coming in. I loved that sculptural feel and that transition of tones from those highlights to those deeper shadows. There's something really nice about this photograph and I thought this would make a really fantastic subject for this panel to go in this frame. Now, in this time lapse you're going to see three major phases to the portrait. The first phase is going to be the construction and bister. And this is a tonal underpainting where I'm going to be using just raw umber. I'm going to be applying that to some of the shadowed areas and even rubbing back through and revealing some highlights with a clean rag and some turpentine. The second pass is a grisaille. Now, this is applied over the bister once that tonal underpainting's dry I then go in laying in a grisaille which is a combination of burnt umber, ultramarine blue and white. Now, that burnt umber and ultramarine blue go together to make a nice neutral dark tone and then I just use white to lift the tone. This creates a really cool effect almost like the portrait's made out of porcelain. Now, once my grisaille is dry I start laying in those colors and I'm going to be using a series of glazes to do this and some of my favorite colors to use for that process are transparent oil colors like turquoise phthalo, permanent crimson, transparent yellow oxide and transparent red oxide. And of course, for some of the deeper shadows I'm going to be using ivory black. But again, for a complete rundown of the materials and the full palette you'll find that full tutorial by clicking the link in the description down below. Now that you're familiar with the subject and we've had an overview of the process, let's get painting. Thank you so much for spending this time with me here in the studio. I really hope that you've enjoyed this video and again, if you haven't already done so, make sure that you're subscribed to this channel. Click that notification bell so you're notified when I upload another video. And again, if you want to take your portrait painting even further in 2022, then why not check out my oil painting workshop. You can find that by clicking the link in the description down below. Thanks again for watching. I'm going to get out of here, get back to painting and I'll see you in the next video.