The day started with the usual ten minute quickies. As usual the afternoon ones were stronger
I worked on an oil primed canvas board. The ground colour was made from light red , ultramarine and white primer which makes a nice grey that can be as warm or as cool as you like.The drawing using a thin mixture of the two colours mentioned above was really difficult and I took a long time to get it as I wanted it. I blocked in the darker areas and then started to put in the middle tones using varying mixtures of only light red , ultramarine and under painting white. I did this because I had recently tried it as an exercise in mixing up warm and cool flesh tones. The idea was to add other colours as the painting developed without losing the sense of harmony I was trying to achieve. I wish I had added more darker areas in the early stages as I liked the way the lighter tones looked when they were scumbled over them.
I added a mixture of alizarin and ultramarine to the shadows and introduced vermilion to warm things up a bit. I also used some lemon yellow to add a bit more variety to the colours.
I am more pleased with the top half of the painting. I like the way I have not been tempted into overworking the face and really like the shadowed area across the upper chest where most of the brush marks are the original ones that have not been worked into. I will try this approach again remembering to put in more dark areas early on including the background and delay using white for as long as possible.
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