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.

Juliano gets a background colour

Today was a great class. Working with ivory black, titanium white, and burnt umber, I created a background value to match the wall (which of course is green). Points to remember: we began by creating a cool grey with black and white, and then warmed it up with the brown. Then I used a pie plate to mix a larger quantity of that colour. Reminder: get a decent palette knife.

Juliano drawing complete...

I spent one evening painting in the cast shadow and making corrections... I still had one major one to make... On the far right bottom corner, Juliano needed more of a neck. This was added the following session, along with a background colour.

Belvedere Torso, red chalk on tinted watercolour paper

I have been working on the upper left thigh. Since this photo was taken, I've corrected some of the transitions to lighter values with a brush to make the form feel "rounder".

Juliano as of Nov 17

This week, I finished marking out the shadow shapes within the hair. I adjusted the jaw line and chin and made the contained shadow under the chin one value... The next step will be to draw the cast shadow around the neck and set it apart from the neck shadow and the background.

Juliano -- massing in the hair

This week, I have been blocking in the mass of hair, working right to left. Minor corrections were made to the nose (made shorter). Work still needs to be done on the bottom left corner of the chin (too low). The small cast shadow to the right of the face has been painted in ... but the top of it needs to be separated more clearly from the hair.

Progress on Juliano

I have finished the "triangle" formed between the eyes, nose and mouth -- critical for creating a likeness of a face. The next step is to finalize the shape of the face. I'm filling in some of the background and darker values to create a "mask".