When I was asked abut this event, I was excited – Gauguin and the post impressionists are a big influence. Gauguin’s bright and intuitive colour, particularly when studying one of his paintings gives the confidence to really go for that saturated and vibrant palette.

In fact, Gauguin’s influence goes way back for me before I began painting – in school many years ago, we studied the Gauguin painting “Ta Matete” and I can honestly say this is the only art study I can remember. To a young eye, those colours seemed almost alien on a grey British day…..Later, my spouse brought back a canvas print of this very picture, which we hung at home for years. Gauguin was there as I developed my art practice.

In preparing for the event, I wanted to boil down my method to something straightforward. Of course, art is often non-linear and I jump around as I see problems and opportunities – I might go around the process a number of times, re-ordering as I go, within the framework of the following approach:

ROUGH IN LARGE SHAPES

Firstly, I rough in the large shapes – use pencil if you wish, however I dive right in and block in some large shapes in a neutral low-tone colour – I start with low tones and add colour to that….as we will see!

Really look at the head shape, shoulders etc. We humans are wired to look at faces as we relate to people and we tend to underestimate the size of the head itself – all that grey matter – we need the space for all that.

I don’t really draw features yet – that’s for later.

LIGHTS AND DARKS

Now for some lights and darks – you can do this in either order – perhaps some white, colour will go over this well and for the darkest areas a deep blue or perhaps purple – you can turn this blacker later.

All portraits have a spread of light and dark – even if this might not look immediately evident.

COMPLEMENTARY COLOUR

Now for the fun part – adding colour.

It’s often a good plan to treat the two sides of the face distinctly – in many portraits a “dark” side and a “light” side.  I like to use complementary pairs, for example: blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green. I might use yellow and purple on the left, orange and blue on the right.

We can do this, eh! Gauguin advised: “Beware of the stumbling block…that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object….”

ADDING LINE

I then add some emphasis with line at the end. You can use line for emphasis or to outline. Gauguin was certainly not shy with outline and demarcation of space! In fact, he almost certainly would have re-ordered my process and started with line. “Line is a means of accentuating an idea,” said Gauguin. 

All together these steps encompass my process –  you have to start somewhere and perhaps it’s the feeling and inspiration that matters most:

“Don’t copy nature too literally. Art is an abstraction. Derive it from nature as you dream in nature’s presence, and think more about the act of creation than the outcome.” and Gauguin also said: “Without delay I began without hesitation and all of a fever.”