Liar Liar Pants On Fire……well, I did exactly what I swore I wouldn’t do. Last night I spent about half an hour applying very thin glazes of burnt sienna and cadmium red light to the skin tones. My face, especially, still looked really sickly. Worried about it all night. And today what did I do? Painted on thick paint with hardly any medium at all. And got the whole thing almost finished.

Painting when I started this morning.

Painting when I stopped this evening. All I have to do is let this dry, then do a little bit of glazing – probably mostly cadmium red light on the face and some ivory black on the shirt and it will be finished. I did put a thin glaze of straight cerulean blue over the background. I thought it would neutralize the background colors, but it turned some of them green.

Skin tone mixtures: 1) Four values of cadmium red light/naples yellow/white

2) Burnt umber and white

3) Burnt umber/ permanent blue violet/white

4) Some burnt sienna blended into wet skin tones

5) Some alizarin crimson/permanent blue violet blended into skin tones

I used a small stiff brush and painted wet-into-wet. Up close I thought it looked very illustrative, but step back a little and it looks realistic. Tom said that anyone could take one look at it and know that it was me. High praise indeed.