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               Girl with a Pearl Earring           Girl with a Red Hat                     8"x10"                     Acrylic Well, I am thinking that she is done, she will sit on the easel here for a bit.  I also am thinking of getting a really wide frame for this one to give it more substance.   I can't wait until she is dry so I can varnish - varnish will really make that red pop.  I absolutely love this picture and as I said before it is my favorite at the National Gallery - will get to see her in real life again soon.  I always have to spend some quality time in the Dutch/Flemish gallery with the Old Masters.  Vermeer has been my favorite and after doing the Girl with a Pearl Earring I wanted to do another.  It just has taken a bit to build up my courage.  Of course the...

            HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!!!! Ok this probably confirms it, I have the attention span of a nat.  I have really had trouble since I came back from a short break getting myself involved into more than one picture.  So am finally glad to see that I can get interested in several, common threads but different looks entirely. Since I have been trying to emulate Vermeer's Girl With a Red Hat and am finding it a bit tedious I decided to take my explorations of verdicchio a bit further.  As you can see I am working on a couple of other reference photos from one of my favorite PMP photographers, the Russian, Vyacheslav.  One is a peeled orange in shadow and the other is his son as an angel.  Just so you can see where I am trying to go I have the original reference photos below. Verdicchio is a form of dead layer/color underpainting.  It is a form of painting in limited colors and going from dark to light and warm to col...

I haven't done a WIP in quite a while.  But thought I would try to do this Old Master's and would love it if others suffer with  me.   This is Girl with a Red Hat, by Vermeer in 1665-1666, and is one of my favorite paintings at the National Gallery.   The National Gallery actually has two-three rooms of little gems of Dutch paintings and I always have to go several times while we are there to spend some quality time.   This is a very small painting 9"x7" and I am doing as an 8"x10" - and boy, can you say small?  Anyway I was going to do as I did the last one, Girl with a Pearl Earring, using chircusso.     B ut  as I was adding my gesso layers to the canvas, I got the bright idea of using a black layer so I would already have the black dramatic background.  Duh - no can do gray tones and then glaze the face.   So  instead am going to try to get the block in and then lighten as needed.  We'll see ho...

This is Kenneth Grahame, drawn by John Singer Sargent in 1912.  Sargent is one of my favorite artists and you will see more studies of his drawings as we go farther into the challenge.  He is the absolute master of minimal strokes and as you can see much of this is really in shadow.  I actually lightened it up a bit with accents of light gray for the highlighted areas and used the gray of the paper for the midtones.  This actually is the second study I did today as I just didn't connect with the first one, it takes a bit of doing before I can into the rhythm of his drawings.  But hope by the end of this challenge that won't be the case. Thanks for stopping by and have a great week.  TGIF

Well I think I am getting getting pretty close to being complete on this painting.  Today I have spent a lot of time on the shadow side of the face trying to get it blended together.  Still a bit more work and refinement on the garment, some touch ups on the face I have to remember that it will be darker when the acrylic is fully dry in 2 weeks), more Blue glazes on the back of the turban and then several glazes on the black background.  In the original picture Vermeer actually used a green glaze made of indigo and welt over the grisaille background.  I think I will hold both my digital original and my painting next to each other in the mirror and see if anything jumps out at me - there might still be some slight adjustment in the right hand side of the cheek area, I think it needs to come closer to the nose in spots, but it would be pretty subtle. Time to watch some of the PGA golf tournament.  Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having a great weekend...

Well an old master I am not, well maybe I qualify for the old part.  Am finally getting the base coats on the garment and the face tones.  I have been battling it out with her right-hand cheek and mouth areas, the nose, forehead and chin.  Whew, talk about one step forward and ten steps back.   Next project is going to be tried with the oils.    I am struggling as I can't get the skin tones smooth.  The acrylic wants to dry super fast today and I didn't add extender so, I am really going back and forth between the glazes and dead color coats.  Then it streaks, blobs and dries hard color in parts and white shows through in others.  I think I am too anxious and pulling color up that I just put down because the acrylic really isn't dry in the dead color parts.  Then I am ending up,with too much face color and have to overpaint to tone it down.  so I think I am glad it rained and cooled things down so I can try the porch for a bit and c...