This is a really fun piece to paint, creating the feeling of movement within a painting.

We will start with a background wash using wet in wet to build a nice blurry feel, creating that lovely out of focus feel so that the hero of the painting stands out.

We use lots of wet in wet techniques to create nice soft edges using the 1 inch brush.

We’re using yellow and permanent rose for the background, so we’ll have to work quick here as it’s a staining colour. Once we get paint on the brush we work from top to bottom to get our nice mottled background in place. Once dry we will move on to the subject and start with a light wash to give a basis to add layers, adding darker and lighter paints to produce a sense of movement within the footballer.

We’ll apply some finishing touches, using virtually neat paint to create the badges and emblems, and to give a darker tone to draw the eye into the painting. We’ll also use add some of this darker mix to emphasise the shadows.