Last week, I explained how I took my painting and turned it around when it was going badly. This week, I'll be talking about how my original plan for that painting went.

As you know, if you read last week's post, I started with a green underpainting, in which I layed down her values and added in her features.

I then started to add the first, very thin layers of pink.

I know you can't see any pink yet, but that's kind of what I wanted at this point. It wasn't until the fourth layer that I saw something resembling a skintone coming through.

What I learned from this is that painting skin by layering colors on top of each other is far more difficult and time consuming than I'd anticipated. At one point, I actually thought her skin was looking too pink, so I glazed green over it to neutralize it. I even tried glazing blue over it to see what that would do. Anyway, this is how the painting is looking at the time of this post.

You can hear all about my debacle in the video embedded in this post. The last thing I did was glaze some red over it because she was looking kind of gray and red can brighten things. This isn't one of my favorite pieces, but it has to be okay to make less than stellar art. Otherwise you can't do experiments like this. If I insisted on every piece being amazing, I would have to just stick with doing what I know. I might revisit this concept in the future.

I'm working on a painting that's an experiment to see how what kind of results I can get by layering colors on top of each other. I started with a black and white underpainting, like I do with all my pieces, which looked like this.

My plan was to glaze green on top of it and then I would glaze pink on that and the two colors together would create a neutral skin color. For info on what I'm basing this on, see this post about complementary colors. 
Anyway, so I glazed a couple layers of green on top and so far everything was looking good.

But when I added the pink, I made the mistake of not thinning it down enough so it not only completely covered up my green underneath, it covered up all the work I had done on my underpainting as far as her features and stuff. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy at this point.

From there it turned into a cycle of turning her pink,

then turning her green again,

then turning her pink again. 

​Finally, I was like, I can't continue like this, I gotta go to plan B. So I decided to paint over her whole face with an opaque green. This would serve the same purpose as my original black and white layer, which was to put down her values and features

So that's where I am in the process of this painting now. My plan next is to glaze pink over it, as was intended. I've figured out now that I need to thin the paint down a lot  for this to work. Putting just a few spritzes of water in the paint won't be enough. I need to water it down to the point where it's practically just water with color in it before I paint over the green.

I'll let you know how adding the pink went in the next post.

The reason I'm telling you this is because I want to show you the importance of finishing a piece and sometimes that requires you to find a way to turn a bad piece around and try a different plan than the one you were using. There was a time during the process that I was tempted to scrap the whole thing and say forget about it. But if I'd done that, not only would I be wasting the canvas and the paint, I would be wasting the time I'd spent working on it up until now and that's just not acceptable.

In the video below, I'm discussing if you really need talent to become good at art and what I really think you need to become good at it. In this video I'm working on the background and underpainting for the painting I'm going to title "Woman Taking Picture".

Supplies used
Fredrix 9x12 Belgian Linen Green Label Pro Series Canvas
Liquitex and Amsterdam Acrylic paints
​Princeton Select Brushes

I didn't have time to make the video I wanted to make about whether using a colored underpainting for skin can get you more realistic results, so I made a video instead where I show you my sketches and what I've been doing this week. I finished my painting, "Mystery Woman In A Museum" and did a practice sketch for the painting I'm going to title "Woman Taking Picture". I throw in some art tips too.

​Supplies Used For Painting
paint:Liquitex Basics and Amsterdam Standard Series
canvas:Fredrix Green Label Pro Series
Brushes:Princeton Select

Supplies Used For Sketches
Pentel Hybrid Technica Pen
Canson Sketching Paper
Art Alternatives Sketching Paper

Supplies Used For Practice Sketch
Mars Lumograph HB pencil
Strathmore 400 series 60lb sketching paper

In the video below, I explain how I got the creepy, spooky vibe in this painting. I used Liquitex and Amsterdam acrylics on a Fredrix Green Label Pro Series canvas.

I just painted this cat on this watercolor card for my stepdad's sister's birthday. In the video below, I walk you through how I did it and give some general watercolor painting tips.

Supplies used
paint
Van Gogh watercolors from Royal Talens line
Cotman watercolors from Winsor&Newton

paper
Strathmore 140lb coldpress watercolor cards

brushes
Princeton Select

In this video, I'm doing my first ever drawing in sepia. I decided to use only sepia for this drawing because I wanted to test the limits of this medium. I describe how sepia feels like, the properties I noticed about sepia and whether or not I would work with sepia again. As usual, I also give some general drawing tips. The animal I'm drawing is called a tamarin. 

Lisa's website
Lachri.com
Leonardo Pereznieto's drawing that I was referring to

Supplies used
Koh-I-Noor sepia pencil
Strathmore 400 Series Drawing paper

My latest piece as an acrylic of a puppy done in shades of blue and purple to demonstrate the use of cool analogous colors.

In the video embedded below, I walk you through step by step how I painted him.

Supplies used
Paint
Liquitex Basics
Liquitex Soft Body
Amsterdam Standard Series

Brushes
Princeton Select

Canvas
Fredrix Pro Series Belgian Linen Green Label

I made a video all about analogous colors, or colors that are near each other on the color wheel. In it, I painted a koala using shades of red, yellow, and orange. I used Liquitex and Amsterdam acrylics on an 8x10 Belgian linen canvas from Fredrix. Enjoy.

Here I'm showing you how I added color to my butterfly. You can see how I did the underpainting here. I used Liquitex and Royal Talens acrylics on an 8x10 Belgian Linen canvas from Masterpiece Canvas's Vincent Pro line.

I made my voice over slower this time. Hopefully it's easier to follow this way.