UPS Delivers at Night, Oil on Canvas, 20×16
(Update 12/2012: This painting is shortlisted for Portrait of the Year on Making a Mark where you can vote for your favorite until December 30, 6 a.m. PST). One night last winter two UPS guys arrived in the dark to deliver a dozen boxes of the flooring materials for my studio. I had started a series of paintings of people at work (still in progress) and asked if I could take their photo to use for a painting. They agreed and were great models!
A couple of months ago he called, asking about the painting, inspiring me to finally finish it. There were some magic moments along the way (see process photos below), such as the one where I did a quick first pass on his hand and then stepped back and said “Wow! That works and I’m not touching it again.”
Since I took the photos at night without flash outside lit only by the fluorescent lights from inside the studio, the photo was dark and the colors were, well, mostly brown. But the UPS slogan is right, BROWN really does deliver! Who knew there were so many shades of brown? I must have mixed a hundred different browns.
Below are photos showing the process of drawing and painting this portrait. Since drawing is the most critical part of a portrait, I used Photoshop to check my accuracy (or lack thereof). I take a photo of the work in progress and after adjusting the size to match, layer it on top of the reference photo with about 40% transparency so I can see the original photo through the photo of the artwork. Then I add another layer on top and trace over the areas that need correction with a colored line.
If you click on any of the thumbnails you can see a larger image in a side-show format.
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- 1-Initial Charcoal sketch on canvas
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- 2-Checking drawing in Photoshop by layering original photo under painting and tracing needed corrections in red on new top layer
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- 3-Corrected charcoal drawing on canvas
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- 4-After revisions to drawing, checking again in Photoshop
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- 5-Started with a burnt sienna underpainting and added dark background. You can see the photo I’m working from on iPad on easel.
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- 6-Started adding color
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- 7-Took a black and white photo to check values
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- 8-Making progress; happy with the hand and decided to leave it as is after one pass
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- 9-Getting closer; thinking about when to stop to avoid overworking
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- UPS Delivers at Night, Oil on Canvas, 20×16
Stunning portrait! Thank you explaining your process. I had to share on my Facebook page — I hope you don’t mind.
Hi Anne, Thanks for the kind words and for sharing on Facebook. I’m delighted you liked it enough to share it so of course I don’t mind! Jana
I absolutely love this portrait. You’re captured a lovely person with a wonderful face and smile.
Great painting.
Thanks for sharing the thumbnail sketches too. I’m not so technologically savvy to understand what you did in photoshop, but it was interesting to look at.
Thanks Carol, I always hesitate about posting steps because they look so funky and show all my difficulties. But I love seeing other people’s process steps so it’s only fair to share. He does seem like he has a good heart, doesn’t he. Jana
Oh, what a great portrait, Jana. And I always love to watch you go through the process. Such fun, and I learn so much from it– a really helpful tutorial. Thank you.
annie
Thanks Annie, I’m glad you found it helpful. It was a really fun one to paint. Jana
Thank you for your generosity in sharing the steps involved in creating this marvelous portrait!!! You are an inspiration!
Thanks Carol! It’s a bunch of work sorting through the dozens of step photos and prepping them to post so I’m glad you found it worthwhile. Jana
We have wild turkeys on our farm. Sometimes they come across our yard, but often I see them while out hiking.
There are flocks of wild turkeys in my area too, but none were around right before Thanksgiving. They must have been hiding out, just in case.
Simply marvelous work!!!…:)
Simply wonderful!! So well done in the capturing of his gentle spirit. Must be so, or it would not have appeared! Blessings always, and thank you for this great tutorial, C-Marie
Thank you and I think you are so right about his gentle spirit. Jana
Wow! That is an amazing portrait. You paint everything so well but portraits may be your forte.
I do love painting people; it’s the ultimate challenge and gives the opportunity to really study someone as you get to know their face.
Wonderful portrait — it delivers so much more than the image, it’s got such depth of character and an aura of contentment. Thanks for sharing your process.
Your words mean so much to me–being able to convey character and contentment in a painting feels like a major achievement to me so thank you for sharing that! Jana
You make me want to learn to paint with oils! Very nice job…it is just beautiful!
Hi Kari, Well that’s quite a compliment. Thank you. I love oils AND watercolor. It’s a treat to be able to choose which I want to work with for a particular subject. P.S. I clicked the link from your website (beautiful paintings!) to your Etsy shop and the link didn’t work. You might want to check that. Jana
Beautiful browns– this is fabulous Jana!
This is an awesome portrait. Thanks for sharing the steps too.
Just lovely! There is so much passion in your work. I see it through the eyes and the gentle smile of your subject. The progressive tutorial is really helpful, thank you for taking the time to do this. Marian
Jana, I have had to just come back here, again and again, to enjoy this portrait. There is so much to see and feel in this special face.
annie
Thank you so much Annie! I can’t even say how much that means to me to hear I made a painting you want to look at more than once. Jana