The final painting of Jennifer. . .

Jennifer . oil on panel . 12" x 16"

A true southern belle - a mother, wife, sister, daughter - remembered in a timeless way. Here's the "final" for the portrait of Jennifer - shown in progression these last few blogs.  Remember, we started with the following:

Good grief, the evolution is even "crazy mad" for me.  It just illustrates the reason why it's so important to just push on through to the end. . .something I've probably "overstated" in this blog!  Apologies. . .

 Skin tone is extremely important to me - have you ever seen portraits where folks looked grayish and not quite alive?!  I do everything to avoid that very thing which includes CLEAN brushes, no dipping into anything (like solvent) to get them clean then back to the canvas or panel with them!  Makes brush cleaning at the end of the day quite a long process but it pays off in the end.  The same goes for keeping your paint mixtures clean with little contamination from other colors.  Contaminated paint makes for lovely grays that you can use beautifully, but making an effort to keep your skin tone mixtures squeaky clean leads to glow.

I stroked on some Ivory Black with Cadmium Red into the background - a tip I read from David Leffel. . .don't shy away from Ivory Black, but do add a Cadmium to it to give it life.  I rarely use it, but it's a slow drier and can help with painting fat over lean towards the end of a painting.  I usually mix Ultramarine Blue and Transparent Oxide for my black, preferring its transparency and the ability to mix it either warm or cool.  

So thank you for allowing me to show you a little bit of my process.  I didn't let you in (read "bore you") with what circles in the mind the entire time you are painting.  It's never ending and ideas come at the most surprising times - I most often don't know why I pick up a certain color, or where an idea actually comes from!  I paint very instinctively even though it's not alla prima.