a prayer for my people: this is it

"a prayer for my people" 16"X20"

the first thing that do in each painting session is to take stock of where i am with respect to values and , in the case of portraits and figures, anatomy. in this instance i noticed that the top and back of her head was too short (a bit of the same foreshortening problems i noticed with her chin and lower face at an earlier step.) this was really fairly easy to fix as i just lifted off an additional inch or so of background over the intended area of the hair/head with a damp 3/4" synthetic flat brush. i then painted in some strokes of cerulean blue, ivory black, and burnt sienna followed by some scraping out of some strands of hair with my thin palette knife. i changed the borders of the too-regular white shape in front of her face by adding some cerulean blue and brown madder almost dry brushed on and blended into the existing washes. i painted the rest of the t-shirt with both cerulean and turquoise blue and lost the lower most edge over her *right* shoulder by adding a dark background shape using burnt umber and brown madder. some shadowing around the neck of her t-shirt finished off this painting. its a little busier in the background than what i had originally planned but i am pleased with the result.