Portrait

I badgered my wife into posing for me this week of my vacation. I originally wanted to do three hours a day but we compromised on two hours and very short breaks. I started directly on the canvas with vine charcoal which I refined with a hard synthetic bright. The canvas already had a rubbed in umber tone. Then I went over the charcoal with thinned down umber and black. I proceeded to model the forms in a thinned down grisaille fashion using hatched strokes almost like a brush and ink drawing. Tomorrow if all goes according to plan I'll begin to paint using a window shade technique. I'll probably start somewhere around the eyes.