On location

Small oil painting, 5"x7"

One year old

Oil paint on gesso coated watercolor paper

Three years old

Oil on gesso coated watercolor paper.  For this painting I used light yellow, alizarine crimson and ultramarine blue.  I had a large pile of fleshtone left over from a previous painting, and mixed most colors as branches off of the main color.  I had one brush for shadows, one for lights. Tried a new approach working as accurate as I could starting with one eye, then bridge of nose, then the next eye, then nose, mouth, chin, and worked around the head and up to hair, separating light and shadow areas.  At that point it was very crisp and sharp detailed and not a good likeness.  Then I brushed and softened it all together with a large 3" brush which helped the overall likeness a lot. I finally repainted some areas, picked out some sharper details and the whitest highlights.