Julie Donec

Mona Lisa #4

This is the 2nd and 3rd layer completed. I used a mix of Phthalo Blue and Raw Umber adding just a little more medium than the last layer. A word of caution about the blue; be careful to add a very small amount of it to your umber; it is quite overwhelming, and I had to re-balance my mix a few times. I like the blue undertones which I hope to make use of when I apply a red hued purple to the left sleeve, and then as an effective (hopefully!), underpainting tone when I lay in my flesh colours, and my warmer browns for the rest of the gown. Looking at the image, I got carried away, and made the general overall value too dark . I'm not sure if I can fix this without wiping out the work I've done, so I'm going to think about this for a day or so. My next step is to paint on the 'dead layer' (see Vermeer 4), and am going to mix up my palette of grays, although I havn't decided what combination I'll be using to create my gray palette. When I was referring to the B/W value image, it was hard to see where the folds lay, as they were muddied with grime/age and appeared to be large masses, and this made for very slow going. This was about 18 hours of work. I went through a number of video films; a real treat for me in the studio. It helps me concentrate when I'm doing especially finicky detailing; the films provide just enough distraction to keep me from hurling my brush out the window when I'm fed up with making folds...