Day 15 of 30 Paintings in 30 Days!

"Angel Among Us"     11" x 11" acrylic    $395 

I finished this at 11:20 p.m., so I fear that unless I paint some easier paintings, I may get behind in this challenge.  Today was a full day, with a computer expert here and I also had chores for the grandkids. So why did I pick such a hard subject today??!!!!!  It actually started as a simple painting.  But then I decided to add the ring around her head and also to paint her face more realistically than I usually do.  By the way, whenever I paint shadows on a face, I refer to Jan Kunz' book, Painting Watercolor Portraits that Glow.  It's a great book!
All in all, I'm really pleased with the results, so guess it was worth the long hours to complete her.  It was hard to get a good photo of her under the florescent lights in my studio.  I usually take the photo outside under natural light.  I wanted Botticelli hair for this one.  For my next version of this, I intend to make it a horizontal format, so that the hair can blow in the wind even farther. Below is the beginning stage of this painting.  The process is explained on Day 3 of this blog. I was so in love with the colors of her hair that it took many very timid washes of shadow color before I realized that value trumps color every time.  Lesson learned.