Time to call this a finished painting. There was, of course, the lower section of the dress to complete which I did in the same single layer technique as the top. Other than that, there were a few minor touch-ups to be done. I couldn’t be more pleased with the final painting. The entire piece west very smoothly and relatively quickly. More important, it was a lot of fun to work on and gave me an opportunity not only to practice some of my usual figure painting techniques, but to experiment with several new ones as well. I think I will try and have some little project like this going in addition to whatever else I may be working on in the future.

If so it’s a perverse one…. Our first cat blog pic.

‘Young Builder’, ‘How Far We’ve Come’, and ‘Born With Wings’ have always been three of my favorite paintings because I would like to identify with their characters. I grew up in a somewhat unconventional setting (some of my earliest memories are of hanging out in an airport hanger watching my mom pull the innards out of airplanes, then rebuild and pilot them) and eventually found myself gravitating toward the sciences and math. By sheer luck I ended up in a career that I love, but I am also one of only a few women who do similar things. I would say that at any local conference women comprise about 20% of those in attendence. We are the noisy table at these conferences. :) At a national conference I would estimate that percentage to be higher but not by a huge margin. Here’s a picture of one my more challenging days up in Kamas - challenging because it was maybe five degrees and the little knobbies on the level are TINY! Very hard to manage with gloves on.

All of you acute readers who have been paying close attention, have no doubt figured out that the painting of the girl by the fountain has actually been complete for some time (it is already in my portfolio). I am basically playing catch-up with the blog commentary. I think it is time for a little blogging on what is going on in my studio right now.

I posted on this painting briefly a few days ago when I had just completed work on the concrete. Since then, I have finished the background buildings and the sky, and have begun work on the figures. My lovely wife Sara and her sister were kind enough to model, and so far I think I have managed to capture them both fairly well.

This first image is, obviously, of the entire painting so far. I realize it can be a bit disconcerting with the two faces floating in the air like this, but I assure you it is only temporary.

These next two composite images show details of the faces in various stages of completion. I thought they might be of interest.

Once again, I encourage anyone who happens to be reading this and may have any questions or comments, to please send them in. I would love for this to evolve into more of a conversation about Art and Art technique.

All that remains to be painted is the dress. Normally I would place the mid-tones and then blend in the darker shadows and the highlights. However, I found through a little experimentation, that I was able to achieve a softer, cotton feel that worked better for this dress by using thick paint on a small brush, and putting down final colors where they belonged. There was, of course, blending involved, but not one color onto another. In some ways it reminded me of working with Prismacolor pencils. The exception to this pattern was a few very small areas of pure white that were easier to lay down on top than to paint around. I am very excited to be this close to completing the painting, which has become my favorite works to date, especially from a technical standpoint.