It may not seem like much progress, but I was really happy with what I accomplished today. I worked on her shoulders and chest, her hand, a rough outline of the chair, started working on the gauzy skirt on the left side of the painting and I tightened up the background around the bottom of the dress. I am thinking I might finish it tomorrow.
I do have to say that I had absolutely no idea how to do the gauze on the skirt. So I really looked at the photo and decided it was purple, which makes sense since that is the shadow color (at least in Sue's class) for white. I painted it in and it looked okay on the canvas, but in the photo I took of the painting, it looks even better - it actually looks like gauze! Oh, the joy in the little things in life! Ha!
I also have to say if I attempt to do another full figure painting like this, I'm going to go larger. This one is on a 12x16 canvas, and it's just too small. Her face is postage stamp size, and that made it really difficult to work on her face.
I had my first portrait painting class with Sue Foell today and it went well. I am thinking that I may have gotten into a few bad habits - but hopefully I can correct those. One thing we did in class that surprised me was we blocked in all the hair with a base color - viridian and transparent oxide red. I've never done that before. Also we blocked in the shadow on the face, and the color was much darker than I expected - a mixture of cad red light and permanent green light. I guess I'm always saying my faces are too white, so it will be good for me to darken things up a bit.
Also met some great artists today in this class. It seems like almost every one of them is a professional artist. I found out about a figurative painting from life group that I plan to join. I'm sure painting from life will be a real challenge - one I'm looking forward to! The class actually meets tomorrow night, so if I can get in touch with them to go, I will be posting that tomorrow instead of finishing Marilyn. :(
