getting close....i think

i had a few hours to work on the current two paintings yesterday but ran out of time for posting the progress.

"?"  18"X30"

regarding the couple painting (for which i don't have a title yet) i needed to finish the woman's shirt which i did with a #16 round brush and predominantly mineral violet paint. i also charged some ultramarine blue and raw sienna in random places to break up the color and add some richness to the area. after that i tried to lose a few edges along the stripes. i put a little more detail on the bench and tried to leave a little more to the imagination with less detail. i decided that the background needed little but i did darken it at the top and along the sides with a glaze of ultramarine blue. the limbs needed a little more modeling. this was done with a layer of scarlet lake and cadmium yellow-orange (holbein) followed by ultramarine blue. i think that is about it for right now. i will put this up where i can see it several times a day and decide if more needs to be done in a week or so. if anyone is reading this and has an opinion i would love to hear it. any ideas for a title?

"toward the future"  16"X18"

in respect to the painting started at our life session, i mainly worked on the background. i framed in the upper right of the painting with  stripes of cerulean blue/cadmium yellow pale and darkened the enclosed rectangle around his head with successive layers of warm alternating with cool colors until it was about as dark as you see here. the colors were ultramarine blue, permanent rose, raw sienna, burnt sienna, mineral violet, cerulean blue (or really just an iteration of the colors used in his face) applied with a #26 round brush. i went with a stripe of mineral violet along the bottom of the horizontal bluish-green stripe to represent a shadow on the sort of lavender wall. for no other reason than i wanted to i added some splotches of mineral violet up top outside the "rectangle and down below inside. seems kind of silly at this point, but i do like an unexpected splash of arbitrary color here and there for interest and to do.....well....the unexpected. not sure this is valid but it was fun. i so hope there is a "rule" against doing this as that would even make it more fun, "oh, yea?"