I sketched this very interesting looking man in December 2006. I can't remember much about him, but while looking through some of my archived sketchbooks, he seemed to look weathered by the storms of life!
I have painted this in a technique very commonly known as "Alla Prima"- this is when you start with oil and finish it in one sitting without going back to it. So it has a certain freshness and spontaneous look in the end. Its quite a while I used oil so I struggled a bit.
This was my process
1. I decide to start this without any drawing.
2. I decide to use only 3 colours and white (YELLOW- Yellow Ocher, RED-Terra Rosa, BLUE- Ultramarine Blue.
3. I attack the canvas by just thinking his head was a lump of clay, so, no details just painting shapes in three mass tones.
4. I soften all passages where the three basic tones meet.
5. Then I start sketching into the painting, some of the basic details like eyes, nose and mouth.
6.I make sure I don't over work the details, but add a few smaller strokes where needed to bring out the form.
7. I have a look in reverse through my hand mirror to see where anything has gone wrong.-I correct basic alignments.
8. All through this exercise I have no colour reference, I just wanted this guy to look worn out so I mixed all the three colours into each other as much as possible to get a wide variety of tones and colour temperature shifts.
9. Finally I couldn't resist but sketch into the wet oil with a charcoal pencil to get in some details(his strands of hair )that my impatience with oil will not allow me to do because it drys so slowly.
