"pine ridge jim": next painting

this next painting will be a portrait of a fellow i met out in porcupine, sd, on pine ridge reservation, last may. he has a very interesting history having spent a number of years down in australia (or new zealand, i can't remember which at this date) and then moved back to the rez with his spouse. he helps run the clinic building in porcupine which is how we met him. he agreed to the photo that i am using and although the photo was taken inside i am going to put a loose background of the pine ridge countryside in behind the figure. he has had a broken nose in the past and his nose is quite crooked which i think adds great character to his face. this should be fun!

first stages of "pine ridge jim"

i started with a drawing using the modified contour style on a sheet of 16"X20" 140# fabriano artistico cold press paper and then started the actual painting with the nose and its cast shadow. the colors were burnt sienna and cobalt blue. after putting in a rather dark shape for the underplane, i used a clean damp brush to move the pigment up and over the top planes of the end of the nose and down onto the upper lip. i was using a #6 round brush for all of these steps. i next painted the shadow under the upper eyelid and then the upper portion of the iris. i added ceruelan blue with a touch of olive green for the iris and then used the same procedure for the lower portion of the iris as i did for the nose drawing it down with a damp brush. i put a tie-in with the lower lid right away using the same damp brush but not more pigment. while i waited for this to dry i painted the dark medial shadow in the socket carrying it over the upper lid and below the eye as well. i started this with pretty much pure cobalt blue and moved it around with the flesh mixture by adding the burnt sienna. i painted the lateral socket margin with a lighter wash of cobalt blue blending that into the upper lateral cheekbone area with burnt sienna. adding the hair with a substitute of ultramarine blue for the cobalt right away gave me tie-in there and release of the face shape. by that time the iris had dried sufficiently to just get a bit of bleed with the pupil so i added that with ultramarine blue wet-in-wet carefully painting around the highlight. lastly i scraped in some hair strands with the palette knife when the sheen had come off the wash of the hair.