A Painting of Ali in graphite gray

 

"Ali" watercolor

8" x 8" cradled Ampersand board

I have been following Ali Cavanaugh on Patreon for a couple of years.  

I have LOTS to learn with

painting the face in watercolor.  

More practice would definitely be golden, 

the other kinds of painting (like the newly found greatness and 

interest of Pan Pastel) get in the way.

I don't have the 'softness' yet in my renditions of the face and hair like I want.

For me, there is quite a 'mind switch' from the 

opaqueness of acrylic and the transparency of watercolor.

I'll get it eventually. Stay tuned.

Preliminary Sketch and Rough-In

Sounds like I am building something. However, as I continue with the series of art from 1950-60 black and white photos, I needed to plan my next painting out. I was taking a somewhat square photo and pushing it into a rectangular canvas, so I needed to do little rearrangement. This is just a rough sketch that is guiding me with the location of the figures and their relative size. I will tell about the figures in this painting when I am done. I am attempting to use olive green and burnt umber as a value study as Karin Jurick did - see her blog. I could add color to this one, but it is fairly dark anyway, so I chose to use a more or less monochromatic palette.
Check back to see how this one turns out.

At the primitive stage, but on it's way!