Portrait Of Anne 7th Sitting

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Another session yesterday. I started by applying some thin glazes on the left side of Anne's face trying to add a bit of depth to the shadow areas. Then I worked into that, using slightly more impasto paint. Last week I was struggling so much in bad lighting conditions that I turned on an electric light to give a bit more ambient light to her right side, and I quite like it so we've decided to keep it. I've added cadmium orange to my palette. It is a strangely cool orange that I've never been able to duplicate using cadmium yellow and red and as a tint with lots of white it makes a good colour for flesh lit by electric light. The same goes for alizarian crimson or rose madder tints. The left side of her face is picking up the natural light from the windows on that side and I'm using terre vert, raw umber, mars violet and ivory black.
I was still not happy about something and I came to the conclusion I had the eyes too close together. Much to Anne's consternation, I made the decision to scrape out her left eye and shift it over a bit. I'm still not certain it was the right thing to do - I'm not very happy with it at all. Growing pains. In fact, this morning I attempted to do some more work on it, relying simply on memory and I fear I have only succeeded in making it worse. Its very frustrating.

Comments

Heather Lister-Cook said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
June 18, 2009 at 9:17 AM
Heather Lister-Cook said…
Looking pretty amazing to me! Enjoying seeing the layers building up and Anne coming to life :)H

I deleted my previous comment because of an error in my typing .. I'm so anal lol, hence the need to explain myself also ;)
June 18, 2009 at 9:21 AM
Moira Marshall said…
Wow Paul - great to see the portait through all it's stages and finally to completion - wonderful result! She looks amazing!
June 18, 2009 at 10:20 AM
Paul Hutchinson said…
Thanks, but its not finished yet! In fact yesterday in my exasperation I took a big brush to it and have completely altered the whole thing. Poor Anne!
June 19, 2009 at 12:04 PM
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