After a total of 47 hours of work over 23 days I’m done with this painting. I ended up naming it Sara after the model’s name from New Masters Academy.
This last session I worked on the painting for about an hour then I started preparing gessoed sheets of paper for my next paintings.
Overall I’m very happy with this painting but I always have opinions on how I can improve. At some point I would like to get to a skill with the figure where I don’t have to labor over it so much. I want to be able to describe without rendering down so far.
Also, I feel this is a good representation of the photo but it doesn’t go much beyond that. I have pushed the colors, trying to breathe some life into the figure. I like the show the reality of skin, more than a porcelain doll like texture. Maybe a style closer to Freud rather than Bouguereau.
I think the next photo I paint from is going to have more cast shadows. The lack of cast shadows in this work, and the stark black background makes the work too sterile for me. I need to be working more towards figures in real situations not somewhere in space.
What I Learned
Glazing really doesn’t need a lot of medium, I did a lot of transparent work on this painting with straight paint out of the tube. With colors like Alizarin Permanent and Transparent Earth Orange I could get a lot of layers to show.
Blues and Greens in skin is much closer to reality. Any time I look at my hand I’m amazed at all of the blues and greens that I can see. Removing all these colors to have a smooth single tone seems very contrived to me.
Wow! Nicely done
Thanks!
Honestly, I know you think it doesn’t have much depth, but I feel this may be up there as one of my favorites you’ve done. Definitely top ten, probably top five, perhaps even top 3. Keep up the amazing progress. Your paintings keep getting better and better!
Thanks Pattie!
How do you get to this level? it’s great
Great question!. Part of the reason for creating this blog is to show just that. Take a look back through my blog and you will see that the biggest factor for my improvement is working EVERY DAY at least 30 minutes. That is all it takes really, you will create your own path but the most important is just spending time on your art daily.