Portrait demonstration by Anthony Barrow

Anthony started off as a pastel painter but has moved on to oils, acrylics and mixed media paintings. He is an extremely talented painter and demonstrator.

​For tonight's demonstration he was using a lining paper primed with acrylic Gesso.  He started by a light underpainting of greens, blues and purples.  Rubbing them lightly  together and then with hair spray before adding the next colours.

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He is looking down at the model, Jan, and this influences how he adds lines to the oval shape he has drawn, showing where the features will be. He has started, with hard pastels, building up the shapes and features

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He is now mainly looking at tones blocking in areas on the face, as well as in the background. The lighter side of the face is first, with the addition of tones and shapes, next dark blue is used to add shadows into the eye and other areas. The application is still very loose. At this stage he stands back to survey his work. Highlights are now added and red to the lips and other areas. 

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​This was then an appropriate time for a break and Anthony sealed the work, with hair spra,y to give it chance to dry for when we returned

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After the break he started working on top of the colors defining shapes and picking out highlights, adding black to the top of the eyes and just a couple of other places. He was still using hard pastels until towards the end when the dearer soft pastels were used in a couple of areas such as the corner of the eyes and mouth. After continuing to adjust the colours he worked on the blouse  and added more colour to the background and hair. Continually stepping back to get a better view of the finished piece.
​After finishing he sprays the portrait to seal the pastel.

An excellent demonstration by Anthony and members will have learnt a lot. His ease with the audience and colour use were excellent. Next week there will be a chance to put these skills into practice with a female portrait session.

​More of Anthony work can be found at www.anthonybarrow.co.uk