Well have felt like an artistic slug the last couple of weeks.  Did FINALLY get my retaining wall and walkway completed yesterday - set the last 9 pavers (total of 802 pounds of concrete stone/pavers that I lifted 2-3 times)  I am calling it done until the Spring when I need to kill the "kind of" grass and plant new bushes and put out pine straw - then Renate hope my "sweet" little rabbit whom I love dearly - NOT - won't decide he now likes boxwood bushes, this morning out of the blue he cropped off all my chrysanthemum blooms that have been out there for several weeks.
Anyway, since I have been in art denial I wanted to do something that I could get down fast and wanted to work in pastel.  I saw this beautiful striking lady, this picture has the best lighting effects, found as a reference piece in wet canvas's library.  The lighting gave such beautiful skin tones from the purple base to almost rosy terracotta highlights - I find that true Africans have the dark base skintones that our African Amercians don't have, their base tones are more in the yellow direction.  I fell in love with her style, especially the geometric interest of her hat which really focuses on her face, those diagonals push you right to her eyes.  Loved the bead work too, although I don't intend to do that in this piece.  Am working on lesson from one of the portrait classes of laying in the darks and lights to get the bone structure, but really at the end here I just wanted to have fun and get my fingers dirty and forget technical things.  So hope you enjoy and if anyone has suggestions while I can still change things, let me know.
Hope all have had a great week and that next week brings you many happy art moments - thanks for stopping by.

Comments

Rita Vaselli said…
Dear Nelvia,you are so right on the color skin! A funny thing!
When I lived in Turin, I made friends with a family from Zaire (formerly called the Belgian Congo.) They had a particular skin color, while living in Turin, but when they returned to their country ... and laughing said to be tanned back!
They had again particular skin color, according to their judgment,that only gives the African sun!
October 22, 2012 at 3:20 PM
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