Portrait commission: "The Blackman"

10 x 12 inches

Oil on canvas

(commissioned work)

Another portrait commission I recently finished. I liked the yellow background in this one. Choosing a background colour can be difficult sometimes, simply because there's so many ways you can go. But the advantage of oils is that you can easily wipe out something that doesn't work and then try something else. Often (although not in this case) it's a gradual process of trying one colour, partially wiping it off, laying in another colour, wiping that off, etc...until I arrive at something I like. It's a two-handed job when I do this: paintbrush in one hand applying the colour, whilst in the other I hold a towel for wiping and spreading the paint. Fingers get used a lot too.

When deciding what colour to try out for backgrounds, I'll often take a colour that's already in the figure or the face and try a variation of that. In this case I took the yellow braiding on the figure as my cue and used a cooler yellow for the background, darkened here and there with some of the blacks and blues of the man's clothing. What I'm aiming for is a colour composition that harmonises well but is also interesting to look at.

I don't have a strict method for starting or finishing a painting with the background. What I always do, however, is paint on a toned canvas. Getting rid of the white is always my first step, although the initial tone I lay down will almost always be reworked as I go.