Oils over Acrylics Portrait Course with Aine Divine in Edinburgh

Last weekend I spent two glorious days portrait painting in acrylics and oils under the wing of Aine Divine in Edinburgh at the Blue Mountain studio.

​You can see the evolution of my painting below. This was a large painting of about 1m wide x 1.5m high, a lot larger than I normally work so was quite a challenge. A larger version of it can be found here in my portrait gallery.

Aine was a brilliant tutor and provided detailed demonstrations and lots of personal feedback and gentle coaching & encouragement. Her love of painting and portraiture really shows.

I first came across Aine when seeing her working on the Sky Portrait Artist of the year. She made it to the final and I was so disappointed she didn't take the crown that year as unlike many of the finalists she worked directly from the sitter rather than using an iPad or photo based "grid" approach. I found her work to be much more sensitive and "felt" as a result.

A very small sample of Aine's thoughts on painting:

• Start drawing in the air with big expansive gestures.
• Keep your body moving, and keep aware of shoulder tensions & breath.
• Paint with a rag and/or large brushes creating an inspiring surface to work over.
• Squint to see main form darks/lights, establish these in the acrylic layer.
• Experiment. If you know what's going to happen with your painting why bother?
• Step back often & look for relationships between distant points on the canvas.
• ​All marks should be based on looking at the sitter.​

There was a good mix of talent and approaches and it was great to see how other students worked with the same sitter.