Painting Sara: Part Two (and oil study so far)

Sara. Oil Study.

Buenas tardes! Oh... I don't know if you're sick, too; but it seems like everybody I know is sick these days (including myself and my children, too). Anyways, it's not fun to paint when you're sick so, thank goodness I started this oil study last week, when I was feeling great and a lot more artsy than today :(.

Oil study... have you ever heard of that term? I hadn't until recently, it's pretty self-explanatory, though. You do an oil study before working on a larger painting. You do a mini painting where you establish the colors you are going to use, the values (how dark or light you want them), the main shapes, etc. This is an oil study. I'm so grateful it's not the final painting because, I don't know if I would send it to the competition the way it looks so far. I found this study VERY DIFFICULT. Let me share why:

1- LIGHT SOURCE. The original photograph from which I'm working has two light sources. The candle light, and bright morning sun light from the left. While the candle light is warm, the light from the left is pretty cold and it turns Sara's skin color a bit more bluish. Since the goal in this painting is JUST painting candle light reflection, I've had to imagine the other light not being there, and Sara's skin being a lot more orange/ yellow, than it looks in the picture. "Creating" things that I don't see (or pretending something I see is not there) is pretty difficult for me at this point.

This is the photograph. Do you see the light coming from the left? Do you see the shine in her hair on top of her head? That shouldn't be there because the candle light doesn't make it that far. Can you also see the blue/colder tones in the left side of her face? Those don't belong to candle light either. So, I'm working on that.

Sara. Photograph.

2- LIKENESS. As you saw in my previous post, I've drawn Sara several times and I still don't get the exact likeness. That simply tells me I just have to keep on drawing and observing. Drawing likeness is a great skill, but a difficult one to achieve.

3- MOUTH. I think I worked too much on it and have incidentally shifted it to the right. Don't you think? I'll have to move it a bit back to the left (once I stop feeling this sick and the smell of turpentine makes me want to gag!)

Here I show you a few pictures of how the study progressed.

Sara. Oil Study. 

Sara. Oil Study.

Sara. Oil Study.

Sara. Oil Study.

Sara. Oil Study. 

Anyways, this is the study so far. I still have to define details with a smaller brush. Hope we all feel better next week. Thank you for reading!!!

Candela