Birthday Portrait

I am back in the thick of oil paints and canvas, this time though it is for my friend’s birthday.

I have never painted anyone else before, but as one of my best friends moved back to Norfolk, and her birthday is coming up, I thought it would be nice to do something creative for her birthday.

So I offered to paint her portrait, of which she is very excited about. So let’s hope I do her justice!

This is the photo I am working from:

Progress below:

I managed to get paint down on the first day too.

However, the next day, when I sat trying to work out how to work in some 80s pizazz I decided I didn’t like the blue top, so decided to paint back to grey as per the source photo.

Problematic.

As you can see though, I am gradually making progress, also worked a bit more on the face at this point too.

I have started working on making the face much smoother and started to add in the highlights and shadows, as well as trying to fade out the top to be able to put patterns over the top.

I have started working on some of the details in the painting now such as the main eye and the lips

I did a smidge more before I had to head to a conference for a few days..

I have added in detail on the glasses frames as well as bit more on the lips, but the main progress is that I have started to add in the background, which I have done in an 80s style..

As you can see from the below, I finally am happy with the lips, and I have added in the final hair strands over the face.

Also within the final touches are the coloured shapes that go over the top of the 80s pattern, I have opted for blue, pink and yellow to pick out the tones in the portrait itself.