A guide to painting oil portraits from a photograph or sketch by Ruth Ellen, portrait painter and fine artist.

My method of painting is slow, stylised and very precise. It’s designed to produce a neat, graphically striking result. However, the techniques I use are traditional in many ways and are transferable to a looser approach.

I tend to separate the tonal areas and colour in an image using thin washes of paint, building them up in layers from dark shadow to mid tones to bright highlights. You may take your time and wait for the individual layers to dry to create a sharp definition between the colours. For a more free, faster approach, you can paint wet on wet.

Even though my paintings are fully rendered with oil colour, I start by creating a fast-drying “underpainting” with acrylic paint. On the next page we’ll discuss the tools that I use.

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