I don't seem to be able to leave the Florence Lee lesson behind and move on. I am fascinated by the concept/effect of the ground as part of the picture. So I did another one.
I really struggled with her. First of all, after I drew it, smudged it, and used fixer on it, I realized that the eyes were too far apart, so I ended up having to paint over the eyes and one side of the face so I could move them inwards. I ran out of charcoal, so I did it in Stabilo All, and I should have fixed it again before painting, but I was too impatient and it was 9:00 at night and dark out on the patio where I had the spray fixative station set up, so I just went ahead, with the result that I smeared the pencil into the paint in a bunch of places that I then had to go over a few times.
Then, I couldn't find the one color of paint that I really wanted to use on this painting for the lights (Titan Mars Pale). I knew I had bought a tube a few months ago, but it wasn't in my paintbox, so I ended up mixing some pinks that were okay but not as satisfactory.
I worked on the painting for a couple of hours and decided it was done, but when I propped it up to look at it I realized that when I redrew the eyes I had placed one slightly too high, so then I had to tweak that. Since I had to fix that, I did a more thorough search and found my Titan Mars in another box of paints, so I decided to go back in and do a few more brights. Florence's paintings are so much more "painterly" than are mine—I get too obsessed with smoothing and blending, but I love her chunky placement of highlights and incomplete hair. So I tried to introduce a few more random strokes. And oh, that hand....
I'm calling her "Jungle Red," although the red of the nails didn't come out quite so bright with the damn Stabilo All pencil blended into them. Some people will recognize the reference.
"Jungle Red"—clear gesso, acrylic paints, charcoal, fixative, Stabilo All, on thin birch board, 11x14 inches.
