A reader

I haven't painted anyone in the act of reading for a good long while, but I want to keep doing that and building up my collection of avid readers in art, so I found a reference photo I'd been saving and went to work tonight. I was only going to do the drawing, but the rest of my house was so cold and my studio was so warm (space heater rotating on 75 degrees!) that I started painting at 9:30 and quit at 12:30 when I felt about 80 percent done, with only the hands to paint and then some tweaking of everything else. Probably needless to say, I spent a lot more time on it this morning than anticipated, with the result that it's way past time for lunch!

I tried to leave this one more loose and painterly—the view out the window, which was mixed blues and greens with some yellow and white highlights, lent itself to a soft focus, so I tried for that in the foreground as well. I painted the board sky blue as an underpainting, and initially intended to do this one as a Flo Lee, with the ground left in the face, but then decided the theme didn't lend itself to that, so I simply left bits of blue to peek out here and there, in her hair, and robe, and hands. I used a stencil for the wallpaper and was fairly pleased with that, though it's busier than I intended to go.

This one is "Lizzie Reads"—let's see if anyone can figure out why. Pencil, stencil, and acrylics on 1/8th-inch birch board, 12x16 inches.