Tuesday, September 18, 2012

finishing up most recent portrait

step #1
stage #2
i have been a little like a kid in a candy store lately trying out some new techniques that i (re)learned at the nuttall workshop. except for some work on the pupils, and correcting a bit around her mouth, the face was done at the last sitting. so i really had just the shirt and the background to deal with. in the last post i said that i wanted to go with a minimalist approach and as i got carried away with the multiple glazes deal that plan went pretty much out the window. these steps show the progress through to the penultimate and finally ultimate stage. i will comment where appropriate but suffice it to say that i added alternate warm and cool glazes applied with a light touch and no going back to fix anything until they had dried completely. additionally i rather liked the red accent line to either side of her head and i had to keep going back to re-state it as i lost its relative brightness with the surrounding washes.

in the penultimate version it was clear to me that the inferior edge of the descending dark wash along the sides ended just a little abruptly and the shadow on the near shoulder was too dark and quite distracting. so i gently lifted these back to where i thought they worked with the whole better.
penultimate stage
 
"never far from wounded knee"  (15"X20")



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