PAINT A LOW-LIGHT PORTRAIT

When exploring colour, working with a close range of values forces the artist to give more consideration to the slight variations in hue, saturation and brightness. With the majority of the painting being dark and muted, there’s an opportunity here for me to experiment with impactful highlights without the need to push highlighted areas to their extreme states.

I start the painting with a photo reference that I use to study anatomy and the behaviour of light. The colours in the final piece evolve from the colours of the photo by utilising the different blending modes in the Layers panel. Many aspects of this photo will be carried into the final