Painting or drawing this woman, N’Jelle, is an absolute joy! Week two of the pose we decided to change it so I am finishing my started oil on linen with photographs. I had painted from life for four hours the first week so despite the fact my photos show more yellow ochre in her skin I know that she is really more olive in real life. Following are photos of my progress thus far:
Here I am re-defining her features and beginning to make corrections in facial features. She has a very interesting angle from her left brow to the nose. I have re-worked this several times and will most likely correct again as I move along. Sometimes you just don’t ‘see it’ for a while!
After isolating the lights I am going back in and adding more color as well as beginning to correct the drawing of the hand which is too small in the above photograph.
I consider the eye area a very important aspect of a person’s likeness so I will spend a great deal of time
re-working this until I am satisfied. Here I am adding in more of the olive color in her skin tone. The colors on my palette are typical of Steven Assael: titanium white, brilliant yellow lt.(Rembrandt), naples yellow lt. (W & N), cadmium yellow lt, cadmium orange, yellow ochre light, W & N transparent gold ochre, holbein brown pink, sennelier brown pink, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, prussian blue, kings blue, cad green lt, viridian green, dioxanine purple, burnt umber and ivory black. The Sennelier brown pink actually has an olive tone and that is what I am adding to burnt sienna and the yellow ochre to mimic N’Jelle’s skin tones.
I am continuing to work out her facial features and here you can see where I have corrected the size of her hand and am beginning to add her right arm. I am also making the background more of the blue to blue violet family to complement her skin tones.
More updates to come!
As I said I am really enjoying drawing and painting this woman! Following are several drawings I have done of her thus far.
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