Portrait Marathon: Hailey Done!

As I'm typing this, I'm waiting for the paint to dry enough to safely scan the portrait, so I'll kill some time showing you the interim steps.

After the last step I showed you, I kept deepening my darks and adding detail.  I also started adding some color, beginning with yellow, as you can see here in the eyes and collar.  Not too impressive, right?

Now, that's some color!  I've also started to lay in my highlights.  Starting on a darker-than-white canvas means I can really pick and choose when and where to add highlights.  They really helped me begin to see Hailey as a 3 dimensional face!  The background colors are ... um ... bright!  It's kind of neat, but I thought I'd eventually tone them down a bit.  I like how the eyes are shaping up.
I'm still pretty worried about how red she is, but there's a lot still to do, so onward.

It may be subtle, but laying in a layer of the same hot blue you see in the corners (much diluted) helped a lot in terms of cooling off those hot red-browns, and adding some dimension.  By washing on the blue over some of my highlights, I was able to push them back in space, letting her muzzle come forward.

Let's see if my paint is dry enough to scan the painting ....  Yup.  Okay, scanning ....

There she is!

I washed her over and over with ultramarine blue glazes, but that red was just so strong, I eventually had to break down and use some Payne's gray, which has a greenish cast to it, and is very dark, to neutralize some of the red, and get my darks as dark as I wanted them to be.  I toned down the background, went back in to do little whiskery places, stepped back and thought, "Hm.  I could stop.  It looks pretty good.  But maybe just a little bit of that warm blue reflecting in some spots ...."  I mixed up a thin wash, and laid some along the top of her head, and in a few other strategic areas, and decided she was finis!

I really like how she came out.  My husband says her nose just pops right out at you, and I feel her smile is happy and warm.  I hope Maureen likes her portrait!

Tomorrow, it's on to Judy's MikiToo.  There's some real drama in that one!  I'm looking forward to it.