The Easel Is Back On The Porch

This spring is much colder than last year but I am an optimist so I have carried the easel out to the porch. Painting in daylight beats indoors anytime but it is almost too cold to keep dexterity.

I have had two good days this month and worked on two oilpaintings, both repaints on top of other ideas. I have used photos for reference on both. The first canvas was a failed portrait in oil.
To avoid letting the old image distract me I turned the canvas to landscape.

This is the loose sketch which I somehow prefer to the more finished state.

Then I tried out different backgrounds digitally.

It resulted in this.

Then I messed it up and left it for a while.

The second canvas was  an unfinished acrylic painting by my daughter that she did not want to continue on.

I continued with acrylics sketching indoors.

I really liked how the background provided colour.
When I continued outdoors in oil I restrained myself to Ultramarine to pick up the blue from the acrylic sketch. At that session I also had some of the dirty pastel green and burnt sienna left over on the palette from the other painting and decided to even out the background.

For the skin I use titanium white with yellow ocre and cadmium red.

Continued in next post…