![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Higgy01.jpg\")
<\/a>In this painting there is no dilemma as I’m working from an old and not very good snapshot. But Higgy of blessed memory had an interesting face and a plethora of expressions.\u00a0 Needless to say I dived in without any sketching or close examination of the snap.\u00a0 I did use charcoal, as suggested by Rob Wareing, to lay out the drawing on the toned canvas, and liked the ease of correction, then blocked in the main tonal areas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I stood well back to introduce more detail, trying not to blend too much, to have the courage to paint the light in stronger tones than the photo which was very lacklustre.\u00a0 The warmer tones are helping too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n and I tried again.\u00a0 This is better.\u00a0 There is even amusement in his expression – how did I achieve that!?\u00a0 There is a mountain to conquer here but I am enjoying the foot hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rob Wareing’s book on portrait painting has arrived from SAA,\u00a0 and it’s going to be useful.\u00a0 it is a “How t0” book but discusses much more\u00a0 about portraits than just paint on canvas – pose, lighting, using photographs or not, brush strokes, preliminary sketches, layout, paint selection, and, crucially,\u00a0 aims and intentions of both sitter … Continue reading “A portrait of Higgy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1523,"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions\/1523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.williamsonfineart.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Well, it’s vigorous and sketchy.\u00a0 The clothes are good!\u00a0 The mouth is not too bad, but the heavy expression in not Higgy, a big generous man with an impish sense of humour.\u00a0 His eyes have climbed up his face as I worked on them, and, I now realise that both eyes and nose are too far to the left.\u00a0 There is no room for the side of his head.\u00a0 The thing about oil paint is that you can scrape it down and start again.\u00a0 Out came his eyes and nose!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n