Thanks Richard! This piece did have an intricate background, dogwood and irises were favorites of the subject. So I spent a fair amount of time this Spring out with my daughter (for light position and scale) taking photos of blooming dogwoods and irises in the late afternoon sun - since the reference images of the subject had a nearly sideways cast to the lighting.
I had three very old (early 1940's I think?) black & white images of her from different angles and used a model with similar coloring (dark brunette/brown eyes/wavy hair) to figure out her fleshtones and hair. The original reference was usable for most of her blouse, but I had to create the skirt using stuffed sweatpants posed under a teal skirt. . . Really wanted the clothing to be consistent with the time period she was from. . .
I approached the painting by first blocking in very rough position and color then methodically creeping across with detail. I found the dogwood branches quite a bit more work than the irises, just because there were so
many branches and I'd realized as I was out photoing them that dogwood has a very characteristic 'swoopiness' (<- for lack of a better word!) that I wanted to make sure to capture.
I've got images of the painting in progress with (very brief!) notes here:
http://terrificenec.com/page/wip/current.htm
Thanks again!
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