Boy in blue polo
 

I painted this portrait as a gift for our best friends here in London. He sneaked to my house on Sunday afternoon and sat for me for one and a half hour after lunch and forty more minutes around six o'clock.

I must say that it is the first time that a paint a portrait in my tiny sudio (I normally go on location) and found it much easier and relaxing. It's so nice when the model leaves and you can work a little longer with the image still in your eyes.

I am very satisfied with this work because I really did "my thing", and it is much more akeen to my still life paintings and to what I do in art class than to my commissioned work.
I included marks drawn with a rigger and I left canvas areas visible, and I just stopped when I thought I had said enough.
14"x16" oil on linen, a larger image here
Ilaria

PS This napoleonic hair style appearantly is the cool one to have, couldn't help reproducing it as it is.

Brav

Wonderful Painting!
 

Absolutely Love It!!!

Ilaria! You blow me away! It is just wonderful--beautifully painted, so immediate, full of the spontaneous joy of creation and yet not sacrificing accuracy. This is very hard to do.

But the best thing about it is the way all these factors come together to say what you want to say. My focus ends up on the boy rather than on your technique, etc. Like a great book or a piece of music played very well, it makes me stop thinking about who painted it and how, and the power of the work of art takes over.

Oh how I wish I had the words to describe how I feel when I look at your painting. It is beautiful and done so masterly bold and fresh. I can't help but feel every color and every stroke just flowed effortlessly on the canvas.

Beautiful, Ilaria!

Thank you so much to each one of you for your compliments and support, they mean a lot to me.
Sharon, painting from life is exciting and terrifying! (and...it was London white sky western light)

This time I made my life simpler by having this boy coming at my studio ( I mean the landing which I pompously call my studio) which I had tried to empty and tidy up.
This preparation time has helped me to calm down and concentrate before starting. In the previous hours I had also painted some colour swatches from Euan Uglow's book ( a must have) and vowed to keep close to his tonal range.

More and more I try to think about what happens on the surface of the painting in an abstract way. The lines are there to remind the viewer that this is not the illusory reproduction of a head but just paint on a flat surface.
I have also tried to work on the luminosity because I think that this is so much a quality of a child's skin.
I attach a close up, my painting application is joyfully becoming sloppy and raw.
I will have to paint this boy's brothers in the next weeks and I hope I will do well too !

Sharon, there's many of us out there !
Not that I have given up on my camera completely, although I try my best to paint commission live it is not always possible. It just feels more right to me. I do a lot of still life anyway which compensates any possible portrait from photo.

I too have a light blocking system in my studio which has huge windows on all sides: I stuck velcro on the sides of the windows and I have black fabric panels with velcro, I can close as much as I like, it's an easy and unexpensive solution.

Lovely lovely portrait Ilaria. Your description of form using colour and directional brushstrokes is impressive - in fact if my knees weren

Peter, thank you, I am embarrassed !

I paint very much "English School" : I read you like Coldstream, he is like painting grandpa for me.
I try to include marks that are more akin to drawing that painting, and I want to avoid creating the illusion of reality, but keep the event happening ON the canvas.

I am almost done with the brothers of this young guy and will soon post the result.

You certainly should not be embarrassed since the praise is fully justified.

Yes I have been strongly influenced by Coldstream via my tutor on my Foundation course but I have other influences as well including, Cezanne (les grandes baigneurs in the National Gallery is one of my favourite paintings), Giacometti, Klimt, Schiele and Stanley Spencer. Keep up the excellent work Ilaria.