Big form modelling on Juliano

This week, I repainted the background, the cast shadow, and the contained shadows in the neck, hair and eye sockets... While I had a good neutral mixture on my pallete, I attempted to reapply the big form modelling on the lower half of the face. It looks better, but there's too much transition, so I will be cutting it back. I also need to remix the titanium white and start at the top of the forehead and work out again. On my first attempt, I preserved some of the dry brush work in the hair but now these marks have to be painted over to make the top of the hair one solid mass.

After this, "first painting" will be the next stage.

Set up for Mercury

Studio setup: Mercury is now on his stand in position, with north light.
The easel looks lopsided but the drawing board itself is level.
Positions are marked with tape.

Juliano's 5 o'clock shadow

Here I made a first attempt at big form modelling. Much more work is needed to get the forms turning.
First I prepared the pallete. I created one column of decreasing values mixing black and white. Then I created a second column of matching values with raw umber and white. To create neutral value (neither cold nor warm), I mixed the pairs of values together and started applying them to the face.

I started working from the jaw upwards, creating short vertical strokes with a wide brush. When I reached the cheek, I stopped. Then I mixed calcium carbonate with the Titanium white and applied that on the top of the forehead pushing out. As I worked down to the cheek, I added increasing amounts of the lighter values to the pure white.

Painting the contained shadows

In this session, I painted two areas: the cast shadow and then the contained shadows (under the neck, the hair, eyes, nose, and lips.) Both neutral values are a combination of black, white, and burnt umber. For the contained shadow, I chose a value that is slightly darker than the background value.