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To quote Monty Python, "Now for something completely different" After playing with my colorful pastels I decided to work more tonal. 

This is a painting for the upcoming exhibition with my friend and fellow teacher, Amy Foster.  We have worked together for some time and wanted to share our different visions of the same model and pose.  I did the original painting in Amy's studio.  The model was Steve who was wearing his carpentry belt.  I did the painting on top of another painting and was pretty happy with the outcome.  Later in my studio I went to fix areas where the original painting was showing through and managed to screw the whole thing up.  Some how it lost it's pizzazz and the composition looked awkward in the frame.  I knew that Amy was going to put her drawing of Steve in the show, by the way it is a terrific drawing of him full figure with the carpentry belt in full view.   Amy is a great story-teller with her staging and drawings of models.  Rather than forgo the work I decided to use the painting and a photo for reference.  I cropped into the figure and focused on using a limited palette of ivory black, transparent oxide red, cadmium red, yellow ocher and titanium white.  The transparent oxide allowed me to play with thin stains which adds dimension when you lay the lights on thick.  I also let some it show thorough in the background as little peeks of red to the dull mixture of black and ocher.  It is much more interesting in life than it is in the photo.  This painting was also done on top of another painting but I toned the canvas with the oxide red and began as I did from life.  I started by placing the highlight on the nose (white) and then keyed the rest of the colors off of that.

I enjoy bouncing back and forth between strong color to strong value.  It makes the act of painting less predictable and much more fun.

For more information about our upcoming exhibit click here