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DRAWING WITH PAINT – Wendy Barratt
@wendybarrattart
The 2023 Portrait Artist of the Year winner, Wendy Barratt, reveals the magic behind her artistry, showcasing how her underdrawing in oils breathe life into her expressionistic paintings. For Wendy, this technique isn’t just a step in the process—it’s her favourite moment of creative discovery, where raw emotion and vision begin to take shape on the canvas. A true testament to the power of passion and precision!
Reference Image
Materials
Cotton Canvas
Set of oil paints
Selection of brushes inc. small hogs hair brush, 1.5″ flat brush, filbert brush, rigger brush
Palette
Solvent
Find these items at cassart.co.uk
Drawing with oil paint
To begin, use a small brush (e.g. a hog’s hair brush) and choose an appropriate oil paint colour for your mapping. Hold your brush at the far end and playfully sketch out the outline of the subject in your reference image. Focus on the main landmarks of the features you can see and build your map across the face, rather than a silhouette going around.
TOP TIP – Be expressive with your sketching. Wendy’s process places importance on lines and you will continue to see them through the building process, all the way through to the final layer.
Proportion measuring
As you continue to map out the sketch of your subject from the reference image, continuously refer to it and check your proportions. If they are slightly out, adjust until you are happy they are correct. It’s important to get this right at this stage.
TOP TIP – The more you look, the more you see. Sketch in any lines you can see. This could be lines across the face, shadow shapes and more. This will help your mapping.
Light and dark lines
Remain playful with your line drawings and mark down as many as you want. These will continue to aid you.
Use the brush to create heavier and fainter lines. These can represent shadow shapes, markings, soft features, contours, structures and more. The only important thing is that you know what the lines represent to you.
TOP TIP – Don’t be afraid to use a different brush or different colours when doing the linework. Use marks that are exciting to you.
Adding structure
When adding structures like the ear, refer to the proportions from your reference. You should now have several reference points to aid you with this because of your linework.
TOP TIP – The distance between the eye to the bottom of the chin is usually the same as the front of the eye to the back of the ear. Check if this is the case for the subject in your reference image.
Hair
Continuing with your linework, study the directions the hair flows in your reference image. Add these in with more lines to represent this. This will give you further structure on the canvas.
Constant adjustments
Keep studying the subject in your reference image. When adding further structure to your portrait, you may notice that some features look wrong. It’s okay to go back over them with more lines to correct them. The chin in this example is coming out too far. We can go over the current lines with new ones to correct them.
TOP TIP – Throughout the process you should keep looking at the entire head of your subject. Analyse where any adjustments are needed. These will help you achieve a good portrait.
Embracing experimentation
At this stage, you should embrace further experimentation. Here, we are putting expression into the marked lines using a larger brush and a thinned paint. By pushing the paint around on the canvas, you create interest and feeling. Don’t worry if your strokes extend out too far or lines disappear.
Have a play with smaller and bigger brushes to achieve your desired look. You can still afford to be experimental at this stage.
TOP TIP – You don’t have to focus on tonal areas when pushing the paint around. Here, we are feeling the form of the head instead.
Tone and colour
Once you have finished your paint drawing stage, you can start to think about colour and tone. Using your palette mix appropriate colours to create the tones you’re after. Next, loosely block the colours in, whilst leaving some of the lines you’ve created.
As previously mentioned, Wendy enjoys keeping some of the initial line drawings in the final portrait. Serving as a call-back to the overall working progress of the portrait. It can add something different to your painting.
TOP TIP – Work your brush strokes around the form of your subject. The strokes should demonstrate movement around the face. This achieves a three-dimensional feeling in the portrait. In this example we can see how the strokes wrap around the forehead.
Covering the canvas
After filling in the face of your subject, you can use a bigger brush to mix paint for the larger areas, (e.g. the background, hair and shirt). Refer to your reference image to make these colour choices.
Loosely add these to the canvas. This will give you an idea of placement and how the colours are working with the flesh tones in your portrait.
Resurrecting the lines
As you block in more colours you will start to lose your initial linework. To re-establish these lines, go back over them with a thinner brush in areas you want to bring them back.
Experiment and play around with your line placement. Don’t be afraid to go back over feature areas. The lines represent a history of your work and creates interest for the eye.
TOP TIP – Continue your adjustments and keep referring to your subject. If you notice something looking out of place, don’t be afraid to go over it and draw new lines of where they should be. In this example, Wendy noticed the mouth and moustache to be too far out and corrected it with new linework.
TOP TIP – Be prepared to change your painting. If it’s looking wrong, address it.
Colourful lines
For the final step, we are looking at how we can be more expressive with linework. Focusing only on the subject and keeping the rest of the portrait loose.
Analyse and identify the colours in your reference image. Choose colours that will work best with the others on your canvas. These lines can play with the form or shadows on the subject; it’s up to you to be experimental and try different combinations.
In this example, the subjects’ shadow across the face contained a hint of purple. Wendy exaggerated this colour to remain expressive and playful with what she saw.
TOP TIP – Use a rigger brush and let it do the work by holding it at the end. This will allow you to move freer, expressive and spontaneous on the canvas.
TOP TIP – This is Wendy’s favourite part of the process. Enjoy it and try out different brushes or palette knives to create these expressive lines.