Leaving the Rut

I've been paralyzed this past few weeks, in that I've ceased to work on this painting. I surmise that my avoidance is due to my apprehension on working on the critical stages of this work. As it stands, every dab of highlight has the potential to change the expression of the face.

I've tried to set the areas of highlight and will soon apply thin layers of glaze (if that is what you'd call it) to set the correct skin tone and achieve a more believable gradation on the face. I'm attempting to hide more of the details in the shadows and burn out a few highlights in an attempt to raise the contrast of the image and create a more compelling sense of depth.

Details... I'm still working on the economy of my strokes. The man's sleeves here is basically a patchwork of misplaced highlights and shadows. I need to work on that. It looks messy, compared with the more direct strokes of the man's pants. Come to think of it though, I found that painting fabrics will have to be the most challenging to make realistic or at least believable. That probably explains why I like painting nudes.

It's a pity you can't see the peculiar blue I picked for the pants due to the limitations on my phone camera. I really went out of my way to find that kind of blue.

I've just learnt that drying (well, the paint actually oxidizes rather than dry if you want to be more accurate about it) a painting lying on the floor prevents the oil from a very fat paint to run separate from the pigments. In some application, that looks cool and I've seen some works that allow the fat to run and trace rivulets down their canvas for effect.

Well, since oil paint "oxidizes" forever and hence I've run out of places to paint on this canvas, I've decided to start on a new work.

This will be done in oil pastel, somewhat like "Painting Helena", although the subject here will be shown inside a shower cubicle that is distorted - rather than a plain patterned background or something that will isolate the subject. At least here, you can appreciate the relationship of the human form with its environ.

You have to understand, I've been doing photography for so many years now that I can't help but see images in my mind's eye as if I was still looking through a viewfinder. So if you ask me, I'm distorting the lines here as if I'm looking through an 18mm lens (on a 1.6 crop factor camera mind you). I'd want more distortion but that would wreck havock on the woman's proportions.

I don't know about you, but I like my composition in this piece. The one big thing that I am now considering is the color scheme. Should I go for peach? What cool hue to use for the shadows?

Well, as I am painting wet on dry with the former painting, I guess I have a week before the layer on that painting "dries" well enough to receive the next layer. So I guess I have this week to work on this nudie pic.

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