portrait of my brother... Experimentation with Acrylic paints

As I found that the grid method worked well to draw out a rough sketch of the outline of the portrait of my Grandad, I decided to do the same for this portrait of my brother. Once I completed the outline, I then erased the grid, and started to paint using Acrylics. When painting the skin tones, I found it really difficult at the start. As a result of my brother having a lot paler skin complexion compared to my Grandad, I struggled to figure out how to shade and highlight the face with lighter shades and tones.

Looking back at where I was with the  portrait so far, I realised my brothers hair was a little darker and ashier in the photograph compared to the colour I had started to paint. Therefore, as you can see in the above photo I decided to repaint the hair once the previous paint had dried. Once I was at a stage where I was happy with how the portrait was looking, I decided to complete the background. I found that the background added lots of contrast to the painting overall, with the balance of light and dark colours.

Then, I moved on to sectioning with portrait with a Scalpel knife. Before going straight onto the portrait and potentially going wrong, I first photocopied the painting and cut out the photocopy where I thought about sectioning the portrait, meaning I knew what I was going to do. I layered the parts that I cut out which added dimension to portrait which I found to look effective.

After doing many flower studies, I came to the conclusion that acrylic paint looked most effective, vibrant and realistic and fittest best with the rest of the portrait when put together. Therefore, I started to add some of the flower studies I had done to the portrait. After doing many flower studies, I found that acrylic paint worked best for me, due to how easy they are to use and create small details and blend colours together.

This is the final outcome of the portrait of my brother. I made sure the flowers were behind the face as well as I front, to add a more realistic, overgrown full effect.

I fractured the portrait of my brother, to reveal vibrant flowers and leaves as well as flower buds, in attempt to represent that he is young, full of life and always growing (just like a flower). It also portrays his beautiful, bright personality – even though others may see him as maybe shy, until they get to know him, they find that on the inside he is a full of energy and happiness.