Drawing for an Oil Portrait of Esme

While my studio space is under construction for a few weeks, I’m painting out of a wee corner of my front room. The lighting isn’t sufficient to work on my current project, so I’m taking a break to paint a portrait of my youngest daughter. 

This 12-minute video shows the process of creating the scale drawing for the painting. Actual drawing time was around 4 hours.

I took a bit of a different approach with this video, and had a lot of fun with it. Hopefully you enjoy it. Let me know in the comments.

I’m drawing on Strathmore Bristol drawing paper, with a vellum finish. It’s nice and heavy, and takes a lot of abuse (eraser work and line re-working). 

The pencil is a Faber-Castell HB graphite drawing pencil honed to razor sharp perfection with 220 grit sandpaper. 

Music attribution:

‘A Hand in the Dark’ by Underbelly & Ty Mayer

‘Julia Florida’ by John Williams

‘Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9 no. 2’ by Frederic Chopin