Lorna A Roberts

Before Christmas, I had another self-imposed challenge (other than my 52 portraits in 52 weeks). I had painted a portrait of my two nieces, Eilidh and Alexa, I wasn’t happy about the quality of the painting so I tried again. The next painting I was a lot happier with. But then my mother said that she preferred the original. I was genuinely surprised. Yes, the composition was simpler- the girls sitting face on next to each other, but surely the painting was objectively ‘better’ in the second. That’s when I learned the power of composition. The first painting was much more dynamic. I asked my sister, who was going to receive the finished painting which she preferred. She, too, preferred the first one. And then, to top it off, strike three when my best friend also said she liked it better.

So, I was unhappy. Very unhappy. I decided that I’d have one last try to create a painting that both I and my family liked. I actually had a couple of false starts using a rectangular board but after the acrylic underpainting, I realised that I had the figures in the wrong place both times. There was too much spare space one end. I needed to go square. I happened across the perfect box canvas in Søstrene Grene. It’s square and large at 50cm square.

I created the underpainting in blue acrylic, as per instruction from Agnes Hjarlmarsson’s portraiture course I had watched recently. I then did a layer in pure oil colour on top. Now, here, I made a mistake in process. I should have taken one small area such as a face and worked on that alone, even if it took a couple of sessions. Instead, I did a quick sweep over the whole canvas. The risk was that the layer would dry before i could complete the overworking. As, with oil, you need to work fat over lean and this was already quite a fat layer. I didn’t have any additional oils such as linseed for a next layer when I started so I didn’t know how I’d continue with the painting and it all sort of got forgotten about.

Christmas came and went. I got hold of a bottle of walnut oil and had a successful trial of it on my single paintings of Eilidh and Alexa. I was just feeling a bit restless and decided I’d leap back on the horse, so to speak. I worked on Alexa’s face first. This was problematic as I’d made her jaw too large. Then I moved on to her sister’s face. Yes, her forehead is pretty large (but, please, don’t mention it to her…). I tried to work on Eilidh’s hands but I was pushing paint around so gave up for the day.

My next step is to go back, adjusting any issues with faces or glasses or hands before moving on. I’ll do bodies next, then cushions before finishing with the surrounding walls and rug. My aim is to complete the painting in a single layer, just moving from object to object. We’ll see if it works…