getting on with two paintings and nearing completion

"the tao of dreadlock maintenance" (19"X15")

i spent about 30 minutes yesterday looking at the painting of the girl in dreadlocks. i decided that aside from tweaking the background and adding a few darks to her clothing that i could little more for this. it is still on the cusp for me in terms of acceptability, but because i like the pose, i will keep it and perhaps (probably) redo the scene shortly in the studio and on hot press paper. on second thought i felt that the white vinyl chair on which she was sitting was too "white" so i toned it down with an over glaze of purplish gray. lastly, i think a little more modeling of the hand would help some. i will tackle this today and re-post tomorrow. here 'tis:

dthe portrait of sophie out in the sun si coming along. i felt that the second attempt without the initial wash was going to be more what i was looking for and abandoned the initial attempt at this time.

"dazzled by the light" (14"X11")

so, the background was way behind the figure. so, i painted some clear water over the top of the painting and let some of it run down the sheet. i then put out some cerulean blue, hooker's green dark, and burnt sienna on the palette. starting at the top left and with a #26 round cosmotop brush i laid in the colors next to each other in no particular order and let them mingle as they ran down the page. as they started to run out of momentum i encouraged the downward flow with gentle brush "touches" and spritzes of water from a small spray bottle. i was always on the ready to blot anything that seemed to be heading in the wrong direction as the whole wash ran down the painting.

switching to a #16 round i added a few glazes to the shadows on her face as some of them were too light in value. the last glaze mainly over a predominantly warm reddish hue was ultramarine blue which pushed back some of the shadow areas with out changing the value very much if at all. some areas of her hair needed darkening and that was accomplished with dashes of burnt sienna, burnt umber, mineral violet, raw sienna, and some alizarin crimson permanent put on the paper and allowed to mix on the paper. of course, for better or worse i couldn't keep myself from scraping out a few strands of lighter hair. lastly, i put in a few darker stragglers over her forehead and in some of the lighter areas in the background around her hair. i felt they needed some accompanying shadows so put them in with a narrow streak of the flesh colors in areas adjacent to the strands. this is getting close, if not actually finished. so, i am going to stop at this point and let it sit a few days. one thing that is bothering me a little is the hard edge to the background a shape above her head and i may soften that some.