Katie Gall Demonstration

Friday 14th November 2025

Katie Gall is a Portrait Artist, Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibitor 2025 and was on Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2024. On the show she painted Rebecca Taylor/Self Esteem and the painting was chosen by the celebrity to take home.

She has been actively portrait and life drawing/painting for about 10 years and became more focused on drawing during lockdown, then oil painting around 2 – 3 year ago.

When she ‘gets in the zone’ she can usually paint a portrait within 3-4 hours. She prefers painting a sitter but occasionally uses photos.

Elaine Winter, one of our members, sat for her. Katie started out with a square 30 x 30 cm linen canvas panel (prepped with moulding paste as it is quicker than the slower process of applying layers of gesso). She uses the Zorn palette, named after the painter Anders Zorn. (The classic Zorn palette consists of four colours: Ivory Black, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, and White (traditionally Lead White, with Titanium White being the modern substitute). She also used linseed oil mixed with Gamsol sparingly as her medium to ease the flow of paint. She typically uses Winsor & Newton paints but has no specific preference.

She starts by studying the model, seeing what colours are apparent. She makes a quick sketch with Raw Umber (which dries fairly quickly) to block in big shapes, mainly the head and where it sits on the page. She then maps in the features looking at the shapes they make and position within the head. She does an under drawing first, then starts to apply colour. She also uses the medium to erase any incorrect marks. She usually gives herself around 20 minutes to draw the initial drawing.

The next stage is the mixing the main colours she will use. She prefers to mix all the colours after the drawing stage than than pre-mix as some artists do. For example Elaine is wearing a red jumper, there is a lot of red reflecting on her face from the lighting so she takes this into consideration during the mixing.

Katie said that she doesn’t work from light to dark or dark to light as some artists do. generally starting from mid tones. She also doesn’t focus on any one area first looking for cooler and warmer colours around the face. She looks to make the right transition of tone from dark to light or from warm to cooler colours. Capturing these shifts in skin tones helps make paintings successful. She typically leaves the eyes till last. ‘If you do it first you get attached to them’.

She tries to use separate brushes for darks and light. She describes the blocking and eyeless stage as the ‘ugly’ stage and that the painting comes together at the very end of the process.

She said it is hard to paint people, you have to ignore what you see, and treat the painting a little like working on a patchwork quilt. You find a little spot, work on it, find another spot and work on that spot.

She was asked where she got her unique stand and palette. She said it was a Pochade Box, made by a Martlet Pochades, based in Armenia (martletpochades.com)

She said that when you paint with a strong colour like red, it works well to incorporate in other areas of the painting too to ensure the painting looks cohesive and balances out.

She put in a bit of the background to ground the picture.

She discussed a bit about the digital artwork she creates using her iPad and showed us a little demonstration. She uses an Apple pen and iPad and uses the Procreate app. https://procreate.com/

Katie works in 20 minute blocks mainly to allow the sitter to take breaks and hold the pose. She completed the painting before the end of our short evening and may work on it further as she does typically for all her paintings.