This work in progress started on January 12th. (You can navigate to a different date through the calendar that appears on the right.)

The work-in-progress was painted with Painter IX.

In this page, I will show the last steps in the creation of Solitude.

 

Up to this point, as I mentioned yesterday, I has spent 1.5 hours. This is straight painting hours. This time does not include any preparation time. Nor the breaks! LOL With the addition of this segment, the total painting time has reached 4 hours of straight painting, from start to finish and last minute corrections.

 

Tools Used:

2B Pencil (Pencil Category)

Tapered Conte 8 (Conte Category)

Sandy Pastel Paper

 

I started this session with her ear. Remember that I didn’t touch it for a while? I’ll never do that again. It gave me such a hard time! My fault! I was supposed to work with it at the same time I worked with her face. I guess I had a moment there. I don’t know why I left it for later. LOL

 

 

 

At this stage, I started to work more detailed on the hair trying to closely follow the directions of her wavy hair and to mimic it’s texture by applying bold strokes. I set my brush to a reasonable size to fill in the masses.

 

 

Here, I added reddish tones to her hair and reshaped and softened the hairline.

 

 

 

Here I painted some hair strands. Notice the hair on her back. Values are important here because the hair on the back is in shadow. Whenever I went too light, I increased my brush size considerably to tone it down with a darker value. The area on the top-front needed to be lighter because is receiving more light.

 

I also tried to fix her eye but I screw it up. Trying to fix it, I even mistakenly placed some reddish mark on the bridge of her nose that now it’s touching her almost hidden eyelashes (the tiny eyelashes on our right). I will later have to come back to it and fix this. Painting is always about correction, correction and more correction.

 

 

 

Now I added her necklace paying special attention to where the light is coming from. Since the right should be a tidy bit lighter, I added some lighter values of yellow ochre.

 

 

 

Still not totally happy with her eye, I decided to take my chances again and rework it. I also added her earring.

 

 

 

Now, it was time for the dress. I added yellows for areas receiving light. For areas in shadow, I added green. I also simulated the texture of her dress painting thin and lighter lines .

 

 

 

I got back to the eye. Yes, again. It has given me such a hard time.

I signed the painting thinking that I was done, but I forgot that I needed to tone down the green on her chin since it was too strong.

 

 

 

 

Finally, corrected the eye! This time for sure! Also corrected the area between her nose and lips. And done!

 

 

 

This is the close up shot so that you can see all facial details and texture. And my eye, of course! LOL

 

 

 

This brings this work-in-progress to an end. I hope you have enjoyed all progressions and that it has provided you with valuable information regarding how to work in Painter IX using the Conte brush and following the same principles of traditional painting.

 

I will now proceed to work on the recorded video featuring the progress of this painting. I’ll be posting her in my journal when this DVD becomes available. So, stay tuned!

 

For my next project, I will be working on a different media but I am not sure which one yet. Any suggestions? See you soon!

 

Thank you once more for visiting my blog. Hey, that rhymes!