Kinski, round 3

Here's a couple more pics showing the inclusion of green in dear old Klaus' face. At this point I have also colored in the eyes. Color tip: eyes are not white, they are basically a lighter hue of the subject's skin color. In most cases teeth would be treated basically the same. White is a color that doesn't really exist in nature, and using it out the tube is too glaring, and using it to lighten other colors results in weak, foggy hues, in my opinion.


A close-up of Mr. Kinski's penetrating, red-rimmed gaze. Note the blues, greens and oranges.

So at this point I have invested about 10 hours into the project, and would estimate that the painting is about 25% done. Now that I have all my values established via these glazed layers, I will begin to apply thicker layers of paint, blending some areas and keeping others sharply defined, and hopefully giving everything more volume and luminosity. For some reason I keep playing the same CD over and over when I work on this, which is "Saturnalia" by The Gutter Twins (an utterly fantastic record, btw). I start the CD and basically paint until it's over. Once it ends, I clean my brushes and rejoin the surface world (I work in a basement studio).

OK, that's enough painting for the time being. I won't post shots of this again until it's noticeably further along. Next up : thrill to pictures from the Blogfoot "High & Low of Wisconsin Architecture" tour, where we visited the strange and eerie House on the Rock as well as Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin estate in one dizzying, rain-soaked weekend.