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This is the first painting I did from the model shoot at Margaret Dyer's demo at IAPS last month. I loved the angle of the arms, the focus on the head with its loosely pinned up hair and face in lovely profile. I also really liked the abstract quality to the composition caused by the blue sheet taking up half of the space. Even though in reality that sheet had a pattern of butterflies on it, I left those out because I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so it would not distract from the figure. I also changed the color of the sheet, originally making it a bright turquoise that looked lovely against that olive toned background but was not right overall. The value was wrong and as I learned from Margaret, value is everything! Changing it to a different and darker blue was much better.

The biggest challenge when painting after seeing a demo, especially from more than one artist as I did at IAPS, is knowing what to apply to your own process and what to leave out. I absolutely love seeing work that is much looser than mine, and I mean LOVE it, but yet somehow whenever I try to paint that way I'm never quite happy with it. In fact, I feel like I'm being a bit sloppy or worked too fast. I have to admit to myself that I do like a little more tighter look in my own work, not totally photo realistic, mind you (and upon closer inspection mine is not, despite the fact that people compare it to photos all the time), but crisper and more "finished" looking. Finding the balance between learning from others but not copying them  and stretching oneself by trying  new techiniques yet staying true to one's own vision is not easy!

So, in the end I did apply the steps from Margaret's demo with a few adjustments:

• I still did a watercolor underpainting (as a matter of fact, I used watercolor dyes, a tip I learned from Christine Swann, to get as much brightness in the skin tones and vibrancy overall as I could). Here is the underpainting and the reference photo:

• I did not use any black
• From the beginning I used pretty much the local color (but being more daring with strokes of bolder colors) for the skin.
• I did take Margaret's advice and outlined the shadow areas as you can see in the photo above.
• I also used different colors for the background but making sure they were of the same value so that they virtually dispapear into one another when squinting ( I used an olive tone and a purple). I loved the effect!
• I kept the background much simpler by eliminating the window. I added a hint of it at one point but took it out because I found it distracting. I prefer simple backgrounds that let the subject pop!

I'm happy with the final painting. Believe it or not it IS much looser than my regular figure work and most of all I had a lot of fun painting it! I will also use the dyes again as an underpainting. I had no idea how much more saturated the colors are, what fun!