Portrait oil painting - "The Morning Light" - Step by Step tutorial PART 1

Hi Steemians, 

Here it comes my most recent oil painting portrait step by step tutorial. Have you ever wanted to paint beautiful portrait of your loved ones, didn't know where to start. Let me show you my simple method.

Morning Light - oil on canvas board 11x14"

First of all the things you will need:

• A nice subject - I took a video of my daughter because she was always moving, then I choose the best moment when the morning sunlight came in from the side trough the window. I wanted to capture the light and shadow effect of her hair on her face.
• Equipments, materials
  • Sketchbook graphite pencil and eraser, measuring tool
  • Canvas panel primed with burnt sienna
  • Fixative
  • Brushes bristle and synthetic filberts, and a rigger brush for fine detailing (brushes are important part of your toolset, make sure you have good brushes)
  • Artist quality oil paints, list of colours I used:
    • Titanium white, tinting pearl white 
    • Cad yellow light hue, Yellow ochre 
    • Cad red light, Alizarin crimson
    • Magenta, Quinacridone magenta
    • French ultramarine blue
    • Burnt sienna, burnt umber
    • Black     
  • Fast drying medium
  • Wooden palette
  • Paper towel
  • Brush cleaner with solvent

Step 1 - Sketching, preparation

Sketching, drawing, first I made a pencil drawing sketch, just to get used to the shapes and proportions. A good drawing with the right proportion is the foundation of a good painting. Make sure you take your time with this stage, you can save yourself a lot of trouble what may come further as you paint. ("Drawing Course" by Charles Bargue is a great book talking of the foundation for the traditional painter.)

After my sketch is complete I made a line drawing on my canvas panel. 

I used a few guide lines as you see to get accurate proportions of the face, to achieve the likeness. The placement and positions of the guidelines are your choice, I found it easy to use 5 horizontal (chin, mouth, nose, eyes, top of the head), and 3 vertical (left side, centreline trough nose, right side) guidelines. With this method you can easily measure the features of the face, and don't make any mistake. After I finished with the line drawing on my canvas panel, I used fixative spray, to make sure the drawing stays there while I paint. 

Step 2 - Starting the Painting with the Values

Now my drawing is complete I pick up my brush and start painting the basic values. I start with the darks using burnt umber. At this stage I don't use colour just aiming for a good value study, establishing the shapes and forms, dark and light areas.  

Thats it for the first day, if you are happy with the results, take a break and wait until it dries, to be continued in my next post where we start introducing colours.

Thanks for looking, I hope you enjoyed reading, got inspired to paint portrait, and perhaps learned something new.

Stay tuned for the following steps, up vote if you like, comment below what you think, and resteem if you think others might find it helpful.