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Cindy, your post is the best thing to wake up to in the morning since sunrise!!! Thank you!
I think that years and years of this have given me a bit of a formula, or procedure., more like a plan of attack. The odd thing is that I find I have a three hour attention span. Most of the really amazing stuff I have done in this studio has been because they give us that one more hour. Jumping to four, I have found lots of time for subtleties.
Normally I tone the surface with a really quick rub of a red brown. This used a pinker color, whose name eludes me right now, but it was a really different start for me. Occasionally I work directly but I find the values are usually too bright when I jump in direct. Then I spend the first 20 minutes drawing the features first with a medium filbert, then laying in my values using a darker version of the same color. Normally Burnt Sienna. I also rub back with a turpenoid dampened rag. Lets me block in my values and draw very easily for the dimensions. Avoiding soup is the hardest part. Basically painting like charcoal.
Then mass tones. I like to start adding color fast and with a big brush around the edges. Putting in background values in color helps the rest of the painting get down fast. I do a lot of adjusting but a big brush and painting through the first break gives me time without the model to do the boring stuff.
My skin tones are usually mixed INTO white. I have permalba in the studio and almost use it like a medium, rather than a color. I make a puddle of a mother color in the mid value range, and lay out around its edges a bit more pink, a bit more red and a bit more yellow. I will mix in brown as needed for dark, or the amazing gray of ivory black + alizarin + white. I don't make a set palette because there are a lot of unnecessary color I would mix and never use.
Then it is the big brush theory. I work with the biggest brush, flat preferred, and begin very thinly in the biggest areas I can. Arms toward chest, etc. When I can't fit the brush in, I mix up my medium (Marogers) into the paint and begin working more full bodied using a smaller and smaller brush. Getting that mother color puddle started, it is much easier to work around the features in my well-known "-ER" method. I pick a true color and paint warm-er, cool-er, light-er or dark-er. Sounds a bit simple or odd, but whenever I analyse it, that is all I can come up with.
So, trust me, the flies out here would give you competition during the monsoon season. This is the whole secret to my success, if in fact I have any, and I am so flattered that you are interested.
Your Pal,
dj*
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