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Paper: 300lb cold press, Arches

Paints.  Ultramarine Blue, Raw Sienna, Quinacridone Red

After several days of struggling, today I decided to  focus entirely on edge work.  This time I planned out  getting the major edges how I wanted them before moving on.  I laid in the back ground with a simple dirty green wash of raw sienna and ultramarine blue.  While that was drying I mixed my skin tone puddles sticking with the suggestion for skin tones in Mary Whytes book about portrait painting.  So on my palette made a puddle of raw sienna and quinacridone red then mixed the two in a middle puddle.  I repeated this with ultramarine blue and raw sienna as well as ultramarine blue and the red.  This is how I approach color mixing in oils and am very comfortable with working with a palette limited to the three primary colors.  I painted the lights of his face, hands and hair with an orange mixture, sometimes moving more towards red and sometimes more towards yellow.  then I quickly moved to the shadow which had blue added and painted along the damp edge which gave me a soft transition.  Only when the edge was painted did I move and fill in the shadow area.  This gave me better results then I have previously had in the past.  The shadow was less splotchy and not distracting.  I find it interesting that the luminosity of the colors allow me to keep the value range in a higher key.  Typically in oil or pastel I would have gone much darker on the shadow area than I did here.  As I moved to smaller areas I kept focused on edges and learned how to make soft transitions by painting in a middle tone along a shadow then coming back to the edge of the middle tone where it was turning into the light and using a clean damp brush to wiggle in these areas to soften the transition without it looking over worked.  Hooray, I think I am finally learning something!

I painted this next to my last portrait as a reminder to watch the edges.  Also because I am cheap and did not want to use a full sheet for either painting

What I learned:

Plan the edges out and put your effort into getting them how you want them right away. 

Paint damp into damp for a soft edge

You can paint a band of color along the shadow then soften the side turning towards the light using clean water and damp brush.

A three primary pallet of raw sienna, quinacridone red, and ultramarine blue is a very useful palette for portraiture.