Spent the entire day painting and was really surprised at how quickly the hours slipped away. I seemed lost in my own world.

The underpainting had dried, so I started glazing in color. This is the stage which requires patience – and this is where I usually screw it up.  Glazed burnt umber onto her hair – with some permanent  blue violet mixed in for the darkest tones.  I mixed up a few light values of skin tones – white/cadmium red light/naples yellow. I glazed it very, very thinly over the lightest portions of her face. I glazed burnt sienna into the shadow areas, followed by some permanent blue violet. A little bit of straight cadmium red on her cheeks and lips. At this point her face and hand are starting to look more realistic and I have to fight the urge to start painting on thickly so as to get it finished in a hurry.

Glazed the entire jacket – leaf by leaf- with sap green, then decided that it wasn’t quite the right color. Then I started glazing on forest green.

I continued painting the entire jacket with mixtures of forest green and white. It took me most of the day – and now looking at this photo I wonder why I didn’t leave the original sap green alone. Is there something called Painter’s Remorse? Because I think I have it. I was very very careful painting the jacket – I wanted the jacket to have dimension as well as each leaf to have dimension. The leaves are supposed to be laying on top of each other. It looked good close up, but didn’t have as much definition as I’d hoped when I stepped back to look at it.I did keep stepping back to look at all through out the day, but it wasn’t until I’d finished the entire jacket that I started thinking maybe I’d messed up.

I finished the entire jacket, but now I think I’ll have to glaze in some colors – blues in the shadows and maybe yellow in the lighter areas. Right now it looks all too much like one shade of green. Although it does look like the reference photo I was using. I repainted the background – this time I used rose/naples yellow/white and transparent orange/naples yellow/white for the sky. Glazed raw sienna/burnt umber into the field area. I also worked on the bird – I think the blue is too light for a bluebird- and the bird’s orange breast fades into the orange in the sky area. Tried painting her shirt blue – like waves- but didn’t like it.

I’m not sure what I expected this painting to look like, but I don’t think this was it!! Does this really look like a greeting card? Or Sci-Fi in any way? I’m really going to have to think about what I want this painting to say…obviously I intend for Trisha to exude happiness…..but I’m not feeling it right now.