The process from today's portrait painting

Hello everyone!

Today I started a new little portrait painting.

This time I went about it a bit differently than I usually do and took some photos to show how my painting came along.

This is the painting so far. It measures 20 x 30 cm and was painted on a gesso primed panel.

So today I decided to start painting right on a white background. I usually put a first layer down of a neutral midtone value that gives me a place to expand my lighter and darker values from, but today I wanted to give this way a try.

This is how I started the underpainting. I went in with a couple of brushes and some paper towels and put in the big proportions. In the first stage I like to work quite soft and I go over my lines a few times with the paper towels to smoothen them.

When I am more sure of the drawing I put in some harder darker lines to give me some solid reference points. Still keeping the underpainting quite simple this time.

For this painting I didn't premix any colors. I just mixed them with my brush on my palette. If your just starting out with oil painting I wouldn't recommend it as it can create quite a mess, but today I didn't have much time to spend as premixing does require some, and I wanted some results before my natural light disappeared.

Now, I know she looks quite orangy and wierd, but this is because I don't have a midtone reference to put it into context. This can be one of the tricky things with painting on a white background if you don't know your values. Often you'll be tempted to go too light in the beginning because you only have the white to compare with and everything will look like it lacks a bit of light compared to pure white, right?

Here you can see it after a pit a thin layer of Payne's grey in the background. I didn't put more light values in the face, just includes the background. It's funny how values and colors change depending on what is added or subtracted from the canvas.

Some darker values have been added to the hair and shadow shape on her face and neck. I added some red in her lips to make her skintone less orange and I'm also starting to model the form more.