Portraits in Oil...Dogs...People....and Bike's

by John Allsopp
(England)

I am John Allsopp, a realist portrait painter. I work from photographs as a source of reference and use a projector as a tool. I like people and animals and have recently created some unique dog and British Royal family portraits. Here are two paintings I did of the Queen Mother and Digby the Dachshund. These paintings are done in oil on linen canvas.

"Realist" is the term given to an artist whose art produces a near to photographic quality.

Like every other skill, realism in art requires practice and patience. All realistic types of art, including wild life, landscapes, and seascape painting, require much attention to detail. When painting portraits, even more care must be given to minute detail because, after all, a portrait needs to be recognized immediately.

Here is a brief description of the method I use to create realistic paintings.

Since my aim is to produce as near a photographic image of my subject as possible, it is imperative that I work from a good, clear photograph.

I place the photo in a slide and use a projector. Using a projected image allows your painting to be larger than the slide or photograph, while still maintaining the proper perspective. I have found that glass slides are superior to plastic slides, although they do cost more. With plastic, if you keep it on the projector too long, the corners start to turn up.

I trace around the projected image, using a good quality art pencil.

With practice, you can progress to adding a grid on top of your picture, which gives an added sense of scale.

There are many different materials that can be used to capture the image. My preferred material is linen canvas. Art paper can be used too. For murals, the image can simply be projected onto the wall.

After you have a good, realistic traced picture and you are satisfied with the outline, you can apply color. Color matching tools are available from good art suppliers. They consist of a lens and an area where you apply some paint which you have mixed to match the area on your painting. The lens has a split image. You can see if the match is good by pointing the tool at the projected image and by looking at the applied paint.

There are many other methods that are used to produce realistic paintings. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my preferred method.