A few days ago, I got the urge to begin a portrait painting again. Painting portraits used to be what I thought I’d always specialise in one way or another and is something I’ve always enjoyed. One of my earliest school memories is painting an image of my mum for a Mother’s Day card which I believed to be an exact likeness of her (especially when the string glasses were glued on!). Portraiture is never something I’ve ever found easy, as with any area of art but there’s always something I seem to find relaxing about painting portraiture and painting in general.

When first began my painting, it occurred to me, the thing I perhaps enjoy most about painting portraits is mixing the colours together! I enjoy starting out with only a handful of colours and turning them into a wide variety of shades and colour and seeing how quickly one colour can turn into another just by adding (or over adding) a colour to the mix. I’m not sure why but mixing colours together always seems to be relaxing for myself, although it can turn into frustration when a painting doesn’t seem to be going in the right direction!

The same enjoyment of mixing colour applies to my landscape paintings and I am forever taking photos of used palettes to capture the shapes and swirls of paint within them.