This is a total experiment in the application of chiaroscuro techniques, which involves strong single source directional lighting and, at least in this case, no secondary lighting source.

This is at the end of the first wet on wet process and is logged in at a little over four hours. In response to a comment wishing me to show earlier stages, it was too late in this case, as this painting was put aside several days ago in order for the paint to dry and begin the glazing process, but next project I'll begin documenting earlier.

No, it hasn't taken me eighteen days to finish it, though it's been a while, as we've been away on multiple vacations. Three hours more work after the paint had dried when we returned yielded this, which I will consider finished, though the hair and sweater remain somewhat impressionistic, and which is also ok by me.

Everything up until now has been wet on wet, i.e, no chance to layer much since the first layers are still wet and trying to layer is still a squish on wet paint proposition.  Further progress must wait until after vacation. Unless I want it to end wet on wet. Here it is at 9 hours. Hate this photo. I'll take another when we get back. No time left now.

Quick note: colors used so far on this portrait are White (as always), Naples Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Medium...Hue?(Could that be why it's so transparent?), Ultramarine Blue (only 'cause I couldn't find my Cerulean Blue), Chrome Oxide Green, Black (in rediculously small amounts), Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Violet.
Of course, you could do everything with Grumbacher Red, Ultramarine Blue, and Cadmium Yellow Light and White. The colors I used are convenience colors. It's easier to know Cadmium Yellow Light and/ or Alizarin Crimson with Naples Yellow and White can be conveniently used to approximate the hues you might be looking for. In shadow you might cool it with a green or blue, or a Cobalt Violet that already has a blue component to it, and that you already discovered worked well with that Cadmium Yellow, for example, again demonstrating the convenience a palett evolved through your own experiences can impart.

This is a small portrait at 6" x 8". The colors I used differently from my usual palette are specifically Winsor Newton Cobalt Violet and Cadmium Yellow Medium.  Those colors neutralize each other to the extent that they are on roughly opposite sides of the color wheel. The hair in shadow is done using only those two colors! Normally I would have played with burnt sienna and yellow ochre and burnt and raw umber. This was like finding a shortcut. The same combinations used here and there throughout the painting help give a harmonic tonal and color uniformity, and in this case the violet and yellow can be used easily in the flesh tones, especially shadow regions. A little Cerulean Blue and/ or Chromium Oxide Green will cool it down here and there where necessary. Well here it is at 5 hours.

I'd recently done a portrait where the colors I chose were ...well, different from my regular tablet I'd more or less adhered to for the last 30 years or so. And it worked better.

My father was a great painter, able to improvise something on the spur of the moment, under pressure, say prompted to do a demonstration in front of 50 people with no preparation, fetch a still life or whatever subject from his imagination and complete it under public scrutiny within 45 minutes. This is something I will never do in this incarnation, I don't think. But you know, he taught me very little about painting. I can recall virtually all he ever taught me in this summary: *Never use pure black; it will only look like a hole in your canvas, and *No one can teach you anything about color. You have to feel it for yourself.  And finally, *Don't use all warm colors for your skin tones; neutralize your reds and yellows with an addition of a small amount of blue or green. And that's it.
I don't know how right he was. I still think I can talk about color, specific colors in regard to the material to be represented, and so forth, and be helpful and I plan that for this site as it develops. But I'm not unhappy I've had to experiment for myself over the years. I think that was his real intent. And that was actually pretty great for me as I think I learned better in that way. But not everyone has decades to play when there is no knowledgeable feedback. Because I did have that always. His feedback. Maybe one day you'll want to ask for mine. I'm here and my comments are free.

Today's Wednesday. Tomorrow I'm off to California to visit my son and his family, including their gorgeous daughter whose portrait you see on the left of the banner above.

We'll be heading out for a nice stay at the beach after that, so I won't get to post (or even work, for that matter) for several weeks. But I thought I'd start the day by documenting a small portrait of my other granddaughter, Sophia. So this one's going to be a bit atypical, because Sophia's face is closely cropped in the photo, and I thought the painting might be interpreted in the same way. Anyway, here's the photo I'll work from.

I'm just starting to put this together and find I need to define my primary purposes. The topics I plan to cover seem diverse, but actually there's a strong correlation between them, especially the sculptures and the precast/cast stone.  It's easy to set up a gallery, but just as important in my mission statement, as I see it developing, is the explanatory and instructional side. That will take a lot longer to build, and will often be quite technical. But that's the point. I intend for it to have real substance. I won't be able to cover the universes contained inside these nutshells, but for anyone seriously wanting to learn and explore, I hope to eventually create some reservoir of information that may otherwise for them be less than easy to come by.  Beyond general explanations I want to select specific case studies as applied examples. I plan to also be available for personalized questions and answers.

I painted long before I ever attempted to model. (Which reminds me I'd like to explain that any use of the word "sculpture" here is not exactly accurate. The prototypes usually start as clay models or plaster carvings. Only rarely, on larger pieces have I ever used a chisel.)  My first modelling came about as a result of my job at the time as a moldmaker for a Virginia  architectural precast concrete company. The job was a restoration and addition to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. The year was 1981. There were large Grecian Urns and faces of Muses in the spandrel panels. The Muse face was my first clay model done with screened riverbed clay (I didn't even know where to buy clay then!) and my first use of molding rubber compounds.

A few years later I started studying engineering for the math and mechanics that would help with my structural connection designs as I'd also started moving into drafting and structural design. I received my degree as a civil engineer with a heavy emphasis on reinforced concrete structural analysis in 1987. I've since spent my life in this field, from which the acquired knowledge proved to lend itself well to the other topics covered here. In a sense, it was an accident, my father also having been in this field all his life, as was his father, which takes cast stone all the way back to its roots in the 1870s. And so we'll see where this goes.