"just a hint of mischief": a couple of more hours work.

i just finished reading the article about ted nuttall  in watercolor artist and was struck by a couple of things. one is that ted says he is working more slowly....for those of us fortunate to have seen him paint, it is hard to imagine that this would be possible. however, after re-reading the passage it is clear that he means spending more time observing and SEEING before putting the brush to paper. a lesson from which we can all benefit. the second is that i should have pushed the composition on this painting a bit more. i realized that the eyes are a strong message of where to look in a painting and her eyes definitely direct one to the left of the picture frame. this, i think, would have allowed me to place her even more to the right of the frame than i have done. so much so that i am pretty sure i am going to reprise this pose in the near future and push the envelope a bit.

another note i actually thought up all by my lonesome takes into account the adage, "when the world gives you lemons, make lemonade." i have complained perhaps too loudly that the low humidity out here makes the paint dry so fast that by the time i rinse and shake the brush after a stoke, it had already dried, thus making it impossible to do the sort of blending and lost edges i like to do. i could, of course, wet a spot of paper before the stroke, but this adds a step. i had the brilliant notion that strokes don't necessarily have to blended, especially if they are high value and transparent. all my colors are transparent except for manganese blue hue and the ever diminishing (use of) cerulean blue. i don't think i am going to use this here much as it is already started, but next time.....

after one more hour

end of the second session

so, on with the show. more description of her facial features, a bit on the hair, and some thoughts about the background. features and hair the same colors as i have been using. i already put down some light arbitrary color around the figure and now its time to get rid of some of that white paper. i know that i am going to put a darker wash at the top and put the lower edge on a diagonal going from higher left and lower right s it approaches the figure. probably get a few drips too....leave 'em. i started with a 10% raw sienna over the whole thing doing a more or less flat wash from top to bottom and went over quite a bit of the figure, especially in her hair, to help tie the whole thing together. when doing these i usually go back an forth between warm and cool. n keeping with that i next put on a wash of cobalt blue....same way. i will probably keep doing this until i have the value and tint that i want. warm/cool, like yellow/violet, orange/blue, burnt sienna/ultramarine blue, red-somthing/hooker's green.....you get the picture. at some point i will probably settle on a distinct hue and push it that way.

so here are the two steps after subsequent hour long sessions:


apologies for my verbosity today. the model has an interesting tattoo on her *right* shoulder which i elected to include. i usually ignore tattoos and leave them out, but here it just seemed to se saying, "put me in!"