Figure and Portrait Drawing & Painting Lessons

I paint with traditional flake white.  Because of the small size of this painting, I mix a little Permalba ( a titanium / zinc white mix) with the flake white to make it more opaque.  I also add a little walnut oil to make the paint more buttery.

I completed the painting this session.  Obviously I did more work on the

drapery, but the most sensitive careful work was once again done on the back where I softened form and modified shadows.  I did not use a blender at all today.  All brushwork was either with a filbert hogs bristle brush or a pointed sable round.

I mixed up a background color that differed only slightly from the color in the background in stage two, added enough oil to make it lie down and behave a little like enamel, and painted the background again with a fairly large filbert bristle brush.  A pretty good brush rule of thumb is to find the largest brush for the job, and then put it aside and use an even larger brush.