My latest portrait painting is of my friend, Caitlin. In the past I have painted celebrities and pop stars but I thought it would be more interested to paint someone I know. David Kassan’s oil paintings re-inspired me to start a new series of iPad portraits of friends and family. First I created a basic sketch and built on that to get the proportions right. My rule is that painting doesn’t begin until the anatomy is correct. It would be like having a shoddy blueprint and trying to work on top of that.

Secondly I block in the shapes of her face with color so I know where the light and shadow is going to be. After many hours of painting the small details I blend the skin tones for a realistic look. Caitlin is a big Instagramer so I purposely painted this in a square format. It was an interesting restriction because I had to capture a lot of detail in a small space. The painting was done in Procreate and then I created an “Instagram” inspired variant in Sketchbook Pro complete with hashtags and her handle. Painted using a Nomad Brush and Pencil by 53.

Caitlin

Caitlin “Instagram” Version