This is another oil painting demo that I did in-class for a Personal Focus course at RIT. I completed this a few weeks ago and it's a portrait of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. I worked on a 12" x 16" canvas with a dark to light and thin to thick approach. Like my last post (Elvis), I worked with larger brushes and talked about thinking in terms of volume and large shapes when depicting hair. Students usually make the mistake of trying to show individual strands of hair when they tackle this problem. You will notice on this portrait of Mr. Melville that not a single strand has been rendered. It is so much fun to work this way and I love the challenge of trying to capture form with the fewest possible brushstrokes.
