Technical Difficulties

a detail of portrait #9

Keep your fingers crossed, Friends! The ninth AS IS portrait turned out even better than I had planned, but I am experiencing a few technical difficulties with the tenth. I never use a medium to clean my brushes in between mixing colors. Instead, I dip my brushes in linseed oil in between colors and brush any remaining pigment onto a cloth next to my palette. Painting directly with a bit of the old color mixed into the new helps keep the painting process full of surprises, and it gives the final portrait an underlying coherence too. I usually tone the entire canvas in one bold shade before beginning a portrait to further the effect. Whatever color I choose will bleed into the top layers of paint a bit, lending the whole portrait some of the mood of the underlying color. 

 Good. Great.

Thing is, I also usually have the luxury of time on my side. I can tone one canvas, and then work on an other project while I wait a few days for the first canvas to almost fully dry. Sadly, I didn't meet the tenth AS IS subject until I was almost finished with the ninth. AND! The very bright red that I chose to tone his canvas is doing a little too much bleeding into the top layers. OK, a lot of bleeding. Like the man looks like he could be bleeding. Oy vey! 

Wish me luck in the studio today? I think I'm going to need it!