Continuing with this portrait painting techniques using colour the warmer and cooler tones of cadmium red have been added to her back and the silk sheet has been blended with my finger to develop these areas more. More deeper colours are added to the bedspread.
More defined highlights have now been painted into the sheet and all other areas have been more defined with tone and colour.
To define the ear more I used a pastel pencil especially inside the ear lobe where intricate details can be hard to paint in with thick lumps of pastel. The hand has been developed more with darks added between the fingers.
Highlights have been added to the ear and all areas including the hand are becoming more defined and finished with the use of colour and tone.
The curtain has had areas of light added to it to get the feeling that there is light streaming into the room and hitting the figure.
Developing the background more now and concentrating on the plant leaves and making sure that they are composed to enhance the painting and figure. In the photograph the leaves of the plant were more or less in a right diagonal slant but I reversed this so that the leaves were pointing to the figure instead of away from her thereby leading our eye into the figure.
Here is the finished painting and it shows some quite interesting compositional elements here, for instance the different angles of the window frames, leaves of the plant and curtain. If all these elements were all at the same angle the painting would become monotonous so a variety of angles is the key. An old trick that the old masters used to use was to have an horizontal line broken up by an object and then the horizontal line would emerge again at a different lower level or higher level. Here the woman has broken up the horizontal of the duvet and the horizontal to the right of the woman continues at a lower level to the horizontal duvet on the left of her. This little trick was to give tension and movement in a painting and we hope you have enjoyed this painting technique in colour demonstration.
DVD Figure in Pastel.
You might like to purchase a 50 minute DVD (Approx) in painting a nude woman
in pastel with commentary as the artist works on the figure painting.Only - £12.95 - $22.00 Paypal will automatically convert to your currency. See more DVDs/CDs >>>