the bloom is forever on rosie e." rewind

clearly my post of the video was premature regarding the whole extent of this painting. it was several steps into the process and at least 3-4 hours too far into it. so i will try to place it in context by posting a series of photos of steps representing probably 30-60 minutes of work each. the reference photo of rosie is included.

rosie on "hat" day

just  a word about the subject. rosie was a friend and colleague for 25 years. she was simply the best that we humans can hope to be. she was kind, thoughtful, dedicated, knowledgeable, and fun-loving. she loved to dress up at work and "hat" day was favorite. this was one get-up almost all of us remember as one of our favorites. she died just before the first of the year from pancreatic cancer and the world is a much drearier place without her. i want this to be a tribute and memorial to her. hopefully it will be worthy of her memory.

this will be undoubtedly difficult for several reasons. this is flash photo and i will have to play with it a bit to enhance the values so they are more readable. she is very close all who knew her and i want this to be the best i can make it. an open invitation to overworking it. none the less i am going to give it a whirl and see where the effort takes me (us).

initial wash and start of features

after drawing on this piece of 140# cold press fabriano artistico cold press paper, i put down a light wash of scarlet lake, cadmium orange, and cerulean blue. once this was mostly dry i started in on the features with mixtures of the same colors. i pretty much used the #16 round cosmotop which has become my "go to" brush unless i am doing something extraordinarily small or a large background shape, in which case i would use anywhere from a #10-#6 round kolinski or my #26 round cosmotop, respectively.

carrying on and adding the glasses

here i added the glasses and darkened some of the structures around the eyes. that blob of dark on the lower left is an experimental daub of what i think i may use as the hair color. i can't really recommend doing this and at this point wish i hadn't as it is both out of place and not the colors i am going to use! i started working on defining the hat with both positive and negative shapes. i am jumping around a bit more than usual but in my defense i am trying to bring the whole thinga long at the same pace. i hope i can bring it together so it won't look so fragmented.

give me more hat...gotta have more hat

i'm just going to put in the serial photos of the progress with little commentary at this point. i think the steps will speak for themselves.  then if one watches the video (if you can stand it for 10 minutes) i think an overall idea of how this painting proceeded with be forthcoming.

in the final photo i have brought the face up to where i am happy with the values, shapes, and have put a light glaze of ultramarine blue on those areas that i wanted to recede just a bit. i am still struggling with the background and will keep working toward a gray tinted a bit toward the green as a foil to all that red in her hat and dress.  hopefully i can accomplish that with successive glazes of cool alternating with warm until i am happy with the overall effect. these are still giving me trouble but only by plugging away will i reach any sort of satisfaction.

the other remaining thin is to finish her dress and the lace collar/yoke. i will have to rather meticulously draw in the "holes" in the lace before painting as i know i will make a mess of it is i just jump in a free-hand it.

the face is done. now for the background and lace.....grrrrr