Old Man Ian
This piece is an acrylic painting on a 16”x20” canvas. It was an assignment for my 11th grade art class, in which we were tasked to demonstrate our abilities for detail work, by painting a high resolution picture of an elderly person’s face.
The photo is chose was of Ian McKellen, the choice of which stemmed from me wanting to paint ‘Gandalf the grey’ from ‘Lord of the Rings’ but ultimately deciding his beard was in poor composition.
Attached is my painting vs the reference photo.
Progress Work
Below you can find some of my progress photos, an thumbnails for this piece. I finished this throughout the span of two 12+ hour days, in early December of 2022.
It took a lot out of me, as this was the first realistic portrait I had done in a long time, and at the time of starting it I was a little unsure of my abilities. Painting wasn’t my focus at that point, I was far more into drawing with pencil and graphite rather than acrylics. However I am thrilled with how it turned out, I painted many things that ultimately got painted over and redone on it, but I believe my dedication and focus is evident, and I definitely developed and honed my painting skills quite a bit throughout.
