All's Well That Ends Well

"Legs Elegantly Crossed"

9 x 12 inches, oil on canvas

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This one started well. At least, I felt great. It had been a while since I'd painted, but my first strokes felt confident and successful. And they weren't. 

On the left, you see my toned canvas and initial sketch, moving from orange to alizarin to purple. Should have taken two steps back and seen that the head was too big, but moved on instead. I liked what I'd done with the face, but I gritted my teeth and decided I wanted to keep the whole body on the canvas. So it was off with her head. 

Very satisfying.

What I don't have pictures to show you is that shortly after repainting the head, I scraped the body down and repainted it, too.

All in all, it was a laborious night - but when I got home, I decided I liked the result. With a little tweaking today, I think I might love it. It's the journey, guys. And sometimes the end results are good too.

Four lovely ladies....three wearing clothes.

"Green Miranda"

9 x 12 inches

oil on canvas

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 I'm really enjoying experimenting with limited palettes lately. It's not like I was using a ton of colors before - and I'm sure I will go back to my normal palette at some point. Yesterday I laid out white, Cad red, a green mixed from Ultramarine blue and Cad yellow, and yellow ocher, and made a series of mixes and tints. These work very well as flesh tones - the only thing is that there's really no 'darkest-dark,' but I didn't miss it until I got to the eyes and hair.

Here's me checking my values about 2/3 of the way finished:

 

The best part of the night was being joined by two of my favorite artists - Carol and Gabriella! It's always fun to travel in packs. I'm thinking of dubbing us the Lady Artist Mafia of Eugene. Yep, L.A.M.E. (OK, maybe not.)

 

(image source)

8 x 8" oil on panel © Carol Marine

Carol's painting above and Gabriella's below:

16 x 20" oil on canvas, work-in-progress © Gabriella Soraci