FIRST TWO STAGES COMPLETED

After hours of running around and doing art related activities most of the day, I finally had some time to start the painting.
First I drew the image on a sheet of watercolor paper which is part of a block since I didn't want to have to stretch the paper. I am working on 18 x 24 which is a favorite size of mine. I used a dip pen with a fairly fine nib. I had a small amount of Indian Red Hydrus in a bottle. It seems when you get to the bottom of the bottle there is some concentration of pigment that didn't get dissolved. I added some water to the bottle and shook it until all the pigment had gone into solution. I used that diluted color for the drawing. I started with her eye and worked out from there hoping I was judging the placement correctly. The second stage of the painting was saving the whites and covering the rest of the paper with my "Mother Color". I used the light pattern to create a vertical on the paper.

I will be sitting at Gallery Concord tomorrow so I will have time to paint there. I am excited to try Jean Pederson's mixed media textural background for this painting. This is from her brand new book from Northlight Publishers "Expressive Portraits" I will follow her process of painting the face first then doing the squirting and splashing in the background. I think I will wait to do that part at home as I am anticipating it to be a little messy (to say the least!) That will give me my texture dominance plus I think the running and dripping will have a vertical essence . Now that I have the red-orange color over the paper, I will just paint with any and all colors I feel like and they should have that unifying element of the red-orange undertone.

I want to publicly thank my wonderful son, Bill, for installing and setting up my new auxiliary hard drive. It is set to back up my computer every night automatically. Hopefully this new hard drive with its huge memory storage will solve the overload problems. I can store squillions of photos on the extra space. All this technology is possible for me because my kids and grandkids install software, hardware and fix problems when they arise. They patiently explain things and advise me. I am so fortunate to have a tech team at a moment's notice. A home cooked meal and they feel sufficiently repaid. Works for me!