He starts with a red ground when painting in cool light.  However, he rigged up a red lamp to create the intense red highlights on the model.  Note his palette clamped to the right.  “I’m not a neat painter”, he admitted.  His methodology is so extraordinary that I can’t describe it, much less emulate it.  He grabs paint from one area of the palette, no specific color most times, just the value, or from somewhere on the canvas, and swipes it at the painting, or pushes it into the painting, or waves it at the painting; and sometimes shakes the brush toward the floor if it, the brush, is carrying too much medium.  A glob of blue fell off the canvas at one point, and of course he stepped in it, which of course resulted in lots of little blue blobs on the floor.  But hey, it’s an art school.

He works the background with the same energy as he works the figure, and although his  method may not be discernible, every brush stroke is genius–even in the background.

The figure begins to emerge from swipes and passes.

He develops the drawing.  She comes to life.  From greens and blues comes living skin.   I learned that Caucasian skin color is basically a variation on orange.  Now I know it includes all the colors of the rainbow, just like white light.  For the first time, it seems right to call white skin “white.

She has a face.  This is where he left off.  He will finish the painting Friday.  My photo is underexposed because we lose the light at the end of the day.  I took another shot the next morning but it hasn’t reach my computer yet.  My phone takes its sweet time sending pictures.

Hope you enjoyed.