"Don't waste paint!"

If someone asked me, What is the one thing Emma Petitt emphasizes during her lessons? my answer would have to be "Don't waste paint!" She constantly reiterates: Don't clean that brush, go back over your highlights with it again, go over your darks, and when there's hardly any paint left on the brush, scrub it over the surface to get some nice ghosting effects over the color.

I have taken her exhortation to heart to such an extent that I have had a whole line of portraits emerge from the backgrounds that I make on watercolor paper with whatever leftover paint I have on my palette at the end of a portrait session. One portrait's colors become the next portrait's background, and no two are alike, depending on what colors and in what quantity I use.

Here is yet another one, serendipity that emerged from thrift! I rolled and scrubbed the colors into a piece of paper, and then scraped with a credit card and made marks into the surface with the hind end of a paintbrush. I left it to dry, and tonight I took a look at it only to see the ghost of this young woman's head and shoulders emerging from the background. The outline and colors were so perfect that I didn't even consider applying more paint; instead, I grabbed a couple of shades of brown Conté pencils and simply defined the outlines and added a few shadows to the appropriate areas. It took about 20 minutes, and there she was!

"GirlHead"—acrylics and Conté pencil on Fluid 140-lb watercolor paper, about 8.5x10.5 inches.