Painting Workshop with Aine Divine

I was fortunate enough to take part in a workshop with the amazing portrait artist Aine Divine a few weeks ago. If you are unfamiliar with her work you can find out more here;http://www.ainedivinepaintings.co.uk/ but suffice to say she is one of the loveliest and most generous artists I have learnt from in ages.

She is originally from Cork, but lives in Edinburgh and although she runs classes all the time in Scotland, she is only in Ireland maybe once a year so I was delighted to be able to take part in the event.

The workshop was run over a weekend in The Lab on Foley Street and we had a different model who sat for 5 hours each day. Aine introduced me to a new watercolour paper I had not used before. It is a really heavy weight paper which allows you to be really free. The brushes she recommended were Taklon flat brushes and again these prevent you from being too tight with your rendering. Other than that the only other material required were the paints themselves and the palate I worked from was;
Viridian Green
Alizaron Crimson
Ultramarine Blue
Lemon Yellow
Cadmium Orange
Vandyke Brown
Sap Green
Cadmium Red
Cerulean Blue
I took a few snaps as the work was progressing just to show the technique Aine was suggesting and my progress.

This is after about 30 minutes of just finding the forms and getting the skin tones.

Beginning to add depth and character to the model.

Eddie after five hours! The piece is not finished yet but having not painted a portrait in watercolour before I am pleased with the results. I would love to know your thoughts on the work or if you have any questions please get in touch.