Colleen Barry NYC Artist
patreon
Stages of a Portrait circa 2019
🕑 Added 2025-09-04 00:22:10 +0000 UTCBack in 2019, I was painting a lot of portraits, and this commission came out of that period. At the time, I was looking closely at late 19th-century painters—Abbott Thayer and John Singer Sargent in particular. My process was essentially two layers: first, I laid down an opaque, desaturated underpainting, almost like a dead-color stage, but not a formal grissaille. Once that dried, I repainted the portrait with richer saturation and soft transitions, leaning toward a Sargent-like sfumato. It wasn’t exactly a traditional a-chromatic underpainting or grisaille—more of an improvised method shaped by my influences at the time. I had also been reading Solomon J. Solomon’s book, which discusses raw umber and white underpaintings, and that was definitely in the back of my mind. Looking back on this now I can’t believe how much I was trying to imitate the 19th century it feels shockingly different than what I’m doing now.
Comments
colleen barry
Ill try to break it down in another post…
Shelah Horvitz
I know it’s not where your head is at right now but I loved your portrait stage. I had signed up to take a workshop on it with you right at the tail end of it but didn’t go because of COVID. I still want to know what I missed. This is a very interesting post but I’d love it if you went deeper into the process and the decisions.
Ruchika Juneja
Hi Colleen, I am in awe of your work since maestro introduced it to us in Angel Academy , Florence. Since then I have been wanted to learn from you and this Patreon has been a gods gift. In this particular post, I wanted to ask you, which pigments do you use for the first layer? I have seen these stages before too and always wanted ask or is it the way you mix to keep them low chroma but with shifts of values?
