When we are faced with the prospect of painting a human head, shoulders, body, hands (and potentially more) on a blank canvas you'd be forgiven for feeling somewhat overwhelmed and daunted by the prospect of it all. Some approaches to portraiture require you to map everything out from the start, having a relatively strong idea of what the finished painting will look like from the outset.
Other aspects of starting a portrait can require an enormous amount of accurate draughtsmanship, with outlines mapping out exactly where each facial feature is and precisely where each brushstroke needs to be placed. Whilst these approaches are neither right nor wrong, they do demand knowledge from the outset and lend themselves to a more classical and traditional approach.
The inside-out method
Some painters require an approach to painting that allows them to explore their subject matter in a different way – one that doesn't require much in planning and one that allows them to go straight into the details and modelling of facial features without worrying too much about the overall structure and form of the subject. The inside-out approach to painting is just
