The Good Wife, (further progress)

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

The latter part of this week was not particularly productive for me regarding drawing and painting. I had to prepare and thus recover, from a colonoscopy at the Cheshire Medical Center in our neighbor state of New Hampshire.

I started this painting of my wife back in late May but had become sidetracked with other demands of my time. My art mentor, Gerard Doucette, thought I should simplify the background even though I had already arranged the composition. I followed his advice with a couple of big, dark washes of warm and cool pigments around and behind my wife's head, thus pulling her forward in the picture. Her mouth looked as if it were pasted on her face because there was a hard edge around the lips which I lifted with a scrubber and paper towel. 

Now I am at the point where once the face is complete, there will be some final details such as finishing her hands and then the picture will be nearly done.

I do think the strength of the picture is the warmth of light conveyed across the model's face and reflected on her clothes. I have been experimenting with the combination of gamboge and payne's gray resulting in a rich earthly green, which I particularly like. You will find variations of this color in the foliage.