This was the first portrait I painted after getting back. The face is invented, just to practice a new technique which consists of painting the entire canvas black and then scrapping it all off with a razor blade, leaving a thin black background then painting wet into wet with flesh colors.
Note that the subject's left eye isn't finished yet. something wasn't quite right and I had to scrape it out again. Perhaps I left it this way because of the problems I have been having with my own left eye.
This technique comes somewhat from Sargent who used no painting medium, just oil paint out of the tube and who scraped out the face or areas of the face to make corrections. More on this later.
Remember seeing this gal?
She is from Napoli but I found her working in the Loiano area when visiting friends there. The technique here is the direct opposite of the man because here the background is the pure white of the canvas and the paint is a light sienna used to draw the face. Both works are linked by another dimension of painting, loose brushwork and expressive portraiture where the face tells a story, hopefully an interesting one.
After returning to Eugene the rain was coming down almost every day. Only now, in the last few days have I felt like going outside to paint en plein air. Its going to take me some time to warm up properly but here is a first attempt from Mt. Baldy.
I have shown the following Rembrandt study before but have recently been working on it again, so it has changed. I know I am supposed to have more color in the face but have been spending time instead on the subtle value changes in white and grey:
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