Commission: John's 70th Birthday Portrait Surprise

John's partner, Anne, called me in May to commission a portrait of her husband as a surprise for his upcoming 70th birthday. I didn't know john so I explained that I needed as many photo's as possible to work from. I also asked Anne if she could supply some details as to John's nature: his likes and dislikes, hobbies, academic interests, favoured musical style, genre or singers etc. This helped me form my interpretation without meeting the man whom I am trying to capture. A slightly daunting task.

I started off by building some expression in the eyes, crown of the nose and eyebrows. This gives me something to focus my efforts around. This is a personal preference for me. I like to kep things quite messy to begin with, dabbing and stroking where intuition impels me. 

From there on, I begin to focus on proportion and shape. I want to get the shape of the perimeter around the whole head right, but the size of the head must also be in proportion to the size of his eyes, nose and mouth. I roughly outlined where his shirt will be, as this also help as a point of reference in terms of proportion. At this point, I'm still ignoring the overtly strong colouring that I used to initially mark out his features. 

As often happens to my paintings, as I make corrections, the whole portrait grows ever so slightly bigger. I make further adaptions, realigning the face shape and taking a little off the nose and lips.

Here is a close up the eyes. See the strong contrasts create exaggerated depth I will begin to soften this soon. Also, noticed the fractional details and shadows, all of which contribute to expressing the John's character.

After thinning out the lips and softening some of the colours, I signed it as Anne came to collect. A few days after John's birthday, I received this text message 

“Hi Sam your painting was a great success. John love sit and it was very much admired by all of our family and friends. If you don’t mind, I would really like to post about it on the Wraysbury website. Anne”