finishing "oh, to be older," and starting another.

"oh, to be older," (15"X11")

i did finish the painting started last posting. it really required very little and to be truthful, while i know i did something, i can't remember what it was. so here is the end result.

drawing

the inspiration and/or model for this next painting was provided by a photo by barbara tester and found on "paint my photo." it was entitled "a man called john." i started by drawing the face and figure using a modified contour technique onto a piece of 300# hot press arches paper measuring 15"X20". 

i started the painting by putting a high value wash of cadmium red light, raw sienna, and cerulean blue using my #26 round cosmotop brush and covering the face arms and part of the upper backgound.
i kept this pretty light as his over-all complexion appears quite pale. when this was almost dry i put in the basic shape of the hair with cerulean blue and burnt sienna.

using the same colors but in different proportions and switching to a #16 round cosmotop, i painted the nose and right eye. cobalt blue was used for the iris and a dark value ultramarine blue and burnt sienna for the pupil (same for the *left* eyebrow). i lost the lower outside edge of the pupil in each eye and was careful to paint around the highlights.

i then started modeling the nooks, crannies, and creases on his face using the same flesh colors and losing some edges here and there. i noticed that i had not drawn the shirt and neck correctly on his *right* side so i put in a dark neck wash to redefine the extent of his shirt. this clearly dried too dark and will probably have to be corrected, but i will wait until more is finished before making a decision.

i put a first wash on the background in the upper right of the picture using raw sienna/umber going toward an ultramarine blue near his shoulder. 

to finish out work today i finished the *right* eye in much the same manner as the *left*, did some more modeling on the face, put in some of the shadows on his gingham shirt and played around with the checkered pattern a bit using cerulean blue charged with various tints of alizarin crimson permanent and raw sienna. the shadows were the same colors. some of background to left of the figure was put in with raw sienna/unber (i slash there descriptions because i have both colors in opposite ends of the same well so there is a bit of cross-contamination.) that doesn't really bother me although i will admit it will bother some.

so, here is where we stand on this, the first, day of painting. hopefully it will do justice to the wonderful photo taken by barbara tester.