Mike:
Yes yes, you are absolutely right! I am so tight I squeek and it drives me crazy sometimes. Bill had us doing something he calls "broken color" as part of the painter's dance where you lay in one or two strokes and leave them, step back, mix another color, step forward and make one or two more strokes and leave them, step back, repeat. The point is that you work all over the painting at once and you lay strokes down and leave them. It was hard for me. On Cindy, what you see is actually somewhat broken up again as I went back in on the last day after I had done some smoothing out and finishing and began laying in that broken color again.
I will still do my commissioned portraits very tight as that is how I am most comfortable, but I intend to continue working from life and trying to fight the "tight" in my style.
