the last 30 minutes of "...colleague..."

"surgeon, colleague, friend" 16"X20"

when i got up to the studio this morning i realized that i shouldn't do too much more messing around with the face and concentrated on the jacket and the background. the trick with the jacket was to get the shadows in the folds the right value. too much and they would be too stark and too little and they wouldn't read as much at all.  for the most part i think that they came out okay....a pretty good balance of values. the colors were cerulean blue, raw sienna, and carmine and were painted with a #10 kolinsky sable round. i loaded the brush and placed the tip into the area i wanted the darkest, pressed almost to the ferule, stroked and lifted. this made a naturally gradated stroke. i finished his hair with some ultramarine blue and burnt umber. i tried not to outline the head entirely but sort of dashed and dotted around the periphery and lost a lot of edges with a clean damp brush. i did a minimal amount of scraping this time....i'm so proud of myself! the remainder of the background was pretty straight forward. the warm background to the right side of the figure was a combination of cadmium red and raw sienna (sort of echoing the facial colors) mixed mostly on the paper. i used the largest decent brush i have for this, a 1"sable flat. a slight tint on the switch plate finished this off. one last look left me feeling that the *right* cheek wasn't dark enough so i glazed over a cadmium red light and raw sienna wash. i think this is better. the alarm rang for 30 minutes just as i placed the last stroke. perfect timing. on to our weight training class for old people.