Walkthrough - impressions

The Sketch

As this piece was only an exercise I skipped my normal preparation. I merely clipped it to a board as I knew I wouldn't be doing any washes or heavy wet into wet pieces. The paper is Arches Cold Pressed 300gsm 100% Rag gelatin sized. It's fairly thick and has a lovely tooth.

I sketch fairly loosely in a HB/ B pencil, preferring to sketch straight onto the paper. I do however detail anything that I want the pencil marks to show through the washes of colour - like the hair.

Initial Washes

I prefer to start with skin - generally the face. However for pieces such as soliloquy where the background is detailed I generally start with the sky/ background.

I mix cadmium orange + alizarin + cadmium red and a lot of water to get the colour that I want. I start with light washes and blend the colour to clear with a clean brush and water. I leave white paper at the lightest point of the painting like her nose, cheekbones and whites of her eye.

To add "shaping"/ "sculpting" to the skin I add successive washes, adding a small amount of ultramarine & raw sienna to the mix. Rule of thumb I work to is that the shadows are the opposite to the light area. If I've used warm orange skintones, the shadows will have cool blues.

I haven't decided fully on hair colour so I've layed in a light wash of raw sienna mixed with raw umber.

I've decided the mask will be a blue-lavender colour.