Hello again, Linda--

Thanks for persuading me to look in here from time to time. I enjoy it.

Strong, intense, and focused, eh?

Thanks for being so kind. Actually, as you know, I found painting from life really tough. Like Beth, it felt like a titanic struggle to me the whole time. :)

Good to see part of the gang in here. I was on the other end of the room from these guys, and had a setup similar to Beth

(Extremely) Unfinished Portrait of Cindy
 

This is really showing broken color! Or is it chicken pox? This is the other model in Bill's class, Cindy.

Linda

Cindy Detail (unfinished)
 

And when you thought it couldn't get any scarier, here's the close up.

Linda

It' so much fun to see everyone's work! By Friday, my brain was so overloaded, there was no way I could take in all of your fresh, wonderfully rich images (plus the room was pretty dark).

The detail. Perhaps you can see my "technique" of sort of applying Flake white (left handed, evidently, with an old rusty spackle knife - note the irregular vertical stripes) which prompted Bill to say, "Chris, let's pretend that you have a nicely prepared surface..."

I sanded and sanded but nothing good happened to the surface.

Shhhhhh Chris.... Let's not tell Bill.... I don't think he realizes that. :bewildere

We had a more similar view than I thought.

Carl

Carl: Welcome to the Forum! Dark!? Dark!? I wasn't dark, it was a "Gloomy Art Tomb". :)

Thanks, Michael. Yes, since I forgot my Army surplus night vision Goggles at home, I only survived because of the magnifying glass and flashlight Beth taped to my easel when I wasn't looking (it's taped to my easel at home now Beth, thanks). I think Bill's eyeballs jumped out of his head and popped back in when he saw them taped on the easel.

I'm pleased no one pulled little Mummy cases out of any secret compartments in the gloom, for us to place our canvases in at the end of the day.

I'm also am sure I saw the wall of the east end slide back for a few seconds on Tuesday, to reveal Abbot and Costello scrambling away from a large figure bound up head to toe in moldy rags :o (you young 'uns will probably have no idea who I'm talking about).

I'm kidding around, Bill. In actuality the light started to bring out hints of a wide variety of color temperature in the model, as I adapted more and more to the lower natural light.

At first the shadows just looked straight gray to me, then I began to see how I could push the subtle differences in them more, and use the color hints contained in them. Towards the end, I could tell that given additional time in the saddle with north light, I would continue to see how to better use it to advantage.

Bill is correctly very strong on the positive values of North Light on flesh tones, but it's a bit of a large change for people like me, used to plenty of electric illumination.

Tales From the Crypt
 

Carl and Linda,

Greetings, denizens of the Far Side. Happy to see you posting your wonderful paintings. They really are terrific, and I'm starting to think I should delete mine and go work on it some more.

By the way, Carl, please go and post your hand-held palette for us (on a Tools and Materials thread) so that we can all get a closer look at it.

Michael,

Atypical?