A study for Alla Prima

[ibisbill]

I would do everything possible to soften all the edges. For me, that's always been what does the trick. Especially the edges between the lips and the skin around the lips. In a painting, those have to be soft edges, regardless of what the photograph says.

Photographs are tricky to use. All those sharp edges. When you do a painting from a photograph, I've found you have to soften 95% of those photographic edges.

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

[Bellaskye]

Very nice, I think the thing that jumps out at me is that you have painted more of her face at the left eye than is there in the photo. Looking at the picture her eyelash extends past her flesh. I'm not sure I am explaining that right hope you get what I mean.

[nanzicromer]

Great job! and you are funnyLOL. this is very interesting--showing the process of painting. Do you mind if I use this photo to practice one too? it is a great face photo!

[dollardays]

I would try it again and coat the whole canvas with the umber and use a rag with a bit of turp on it to REMOVE the whites and use thicker paint with more umber to lay in the darks. Then you can let it dry and use it as a base for the color.

[camton]

Thanks for all the help everyone. I've given up with this being allla prima, now I'm just playing with it. That was the whole intention of this anyways.

I'm finding this very difficult to do. Not sure if working from a computer monitor makes it more difficult, as well as my inexperience of mixing skin tones (either get everything too light or dark) but I've learned so much from doing this piece.
The colours so far that I've been using are, red iron oxide, raw umber, yellow ochre, titanium white. I haven't been really worrying about what is warm and cool yet. I'm just trying to get tonal values down, then I want to cool where needed. I'm not sure if this approach is the best, but its what I've ended up doing as a result of all the mistakes I've already made.
It is amazing all the subtle variations from cool, warm, light and darker in skin tones - mind boggling.



Also what bugged me is how orange everything is. I just bought some veridian today and I'll re-adjust in later stages.

[dirtysteev]

I think you started strong, but your skin tones are now headed toward that yucky paint-on tan stuff. It is good to remember, even if your ref photo is a good one, how much distortion it presents. Usually ref photos omit the cool spectrum from the skin, and we end up copying bad information. While it may be good practice for many things, using a photo will not teach you good skin tone recognition. cheers.

[kevinwueste]

As far as "Alla Prima" ( and though I do it every few days - from life) -> to quote A character in "LIve and Let Die" speaking to James Bond: "Names is For Tombstones baby.." In other words, it doesn't matter so much to me what you call it just as long as you get the result. Also, Alla prima painting will take you several HUNDRED attempts before you will start to be comfortable with it -and that's if you are learning quickly! I am surrounded by many many students who, though begrudgingly, will attest to that very challenging fact.

So, this was pretty solid in post #14 and then you got a bit just stuck with all that golden/orange-y /brown paint! The great thing about oils paintings ? If you want, they are eminently fixable !

-KEvin