Lucy Hall Portrait 2020 – cm x 90.0 cm x 50cm on canvas – Jan 2020

My latest portrait is of 6-year old Lucy Hall. Commissioned by her father James Hall. James and I had been talking about a portrait of Lucy for several years, having discussied several photographs we hadn’t found a picture of her which I thought would make a good portrait painting.

Intimate photograph of Lucy’s face, with her characterful, tender, joyful look on her face.

I liked the composition as it had a more photographic framing than a traditional painted portrait. With the top of the head cropped off. I had the canvas size made up with an usual proportion for a portrait, this was the match the picture sizing of the photograph. Which left a large area of colour to the left of her face, which I felt helped to give the composition balance. The background colour again was tricky to decide upon. The underpainting colour was orange.

As she was wearing a bright pink top, I decided to use the colour - Seafoam Green(?), Spring Green(?), Bright Mint(?)… with a touch of Yellow Ochre to give the colour a bit more warmth to balance the background with her skin tones.

I worked up the level of detail in the face way more than I originally intended. I think the level of detail went higher than I usually work it to because I added more detail to the eye highlights and iris, as well as the eyebrow hairs. The rest of the painting marks fell into place around them. The closeup nature of the photograph also helped working up the detail levels.