88 Artists & Illustratorsa feel for the final
image. The window is
formed to give me clues
about the side-lighting
and shadows, and I also
start making colour tests
on paper to work out the
best colour for underpainting the
shed and the best top colours to give a
silvery, aged appearance to the wood.3
I block in the shed with a bright green
with rags, splatter the colour with
Gamsol and quickly blot it dry to create a
chaotic, spotted appearance. I will let some
of this show through for visual kick and
interest. The slate is formed using a palette
knife to create the surface texture, and the
snails are painted in using fine brushes. I
often stand back from the painting and
squint to see which colours could be
chromatically amplified and adjusted. I spot
that I should add a flash of blue on the
central guy’s shirt because it is too muted.
Mixing Ultramarine Blue with Titanium White
produces the most amazing Kings Blue,which can really punch out. This
colour is also used on man by the
window’s shirt. By this stage, the
bodies are near completion, ready
for the portraits to be started.4
The trick is to make the wood of the
shed look old and silvered. I use a
palette knife to roughly scrape various warm
and cool greys and blacks over the green,
letting some of this show through to give it a
bite. When dry, I pick up on the texture by
running a palette knife with black lightly over
the wood. It was a simple and effective way
of creating a wood texture. Careful
consideration is given to the light from the
various sources and how it is illuminating the
scene, and the final objects are added to the
walls. When the portrait is finished,
I lay it out on the floor and start splattering
areas to mess things up a bit, and unify the
painting. I splatter a dark purple into some of
the darker shadows to give these areas
another visual lift.THE UNDERPAINTING
Ninety per cent of the painting will be done
with three colours and a white – Michael
Harding Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Lake,
Crimson Alizarin and Titanium White. The
one colour that is difficult to achieve with
this set is turquoise, which I use for the
underpainting of the skin.
The underpainting is the engine of the work
and it is these colours that power and affect
the top colours. For example, the turquoise
might scumble through in areas to guarantee
my flesh tones are chromatically balanced,
and do not appear too sunburnt. I give a lot of
thought to the underpainting and how much
of it I am going to make visible. I try to work
out what colours will produce the maximum
effect for each object, relying heavily on a
colour wheel to confirm instincts.1
I lightly rough in the shapes with an H4
pencil and block in the underpainting with
old rags to keep everything loose. Using a
soft pencil would leave graphite smears and
reduce the brightness of the ragged-on oil
colour. The slate tabletop was underpainted
in a warm dirt colour – to complement
the cool blue-grey colours that will be
scumbled and knived over it – and a warm,
orange-brown under the blue jeans. For
maximum effect, I used Michael Harding
Magenta for the pink shirt and Crimson Lake
for the tomatoes, letting the white of the
canvas illuminate the colours.2
Outlines are worked in using a large
brush. There is a lot of still life on the
shelf and, at this point, I can’t help myself
and complete some of the objects to help getmorgan’s materials
•OILS
Michael Harding: Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Lake,
Crimson Alizarin, Magenta, Crimson Lake and
Titanium White
•CANVAS
My canvases are made by Russell & Chapple in
Store Street, London, on professional-quality
wooden stretchers using an oil-primed fine
weave French linen
•BRUSHES
Square edged and fine pointed
•PALETTE KNIVES
•PENCIL
H4 for initial sketching
•MIXING PALETTE
I mix paints on a white-backed sheet of glass1
3 2
4
Top tip
Underpainting is the
engine of the work. It
is these colours that
power and affect the
top colours87 Morgan Penn Portraits.indd 88 06/04/2017 14:46