The beauty of working with acrylics as your under-painting is the fast drying of the medium. If time had permitted, I would have begun layering in the oil colors almost immediately. Sadly, I started this painting around the holidays and work interfered with my artwork.
Step 6: First layer of color!
Step 7: Flesh tones
Step 7: the face is complete!
Step 8: Defining the background
Step 9: the first layer of color is complete!
This is always the exciting part - beginning the first layers of colors in oils. Now that the under-painting is complete, it's time to brighten up the painting a bit by beginning the first washes. This is where my style varies from a lot of artists. Many prefer to layer from lightest to darkest applying one layer over the entire surface at a time. I tend to go somewhere in the middle and build my lights, darks, and mid-tones all at once. I generally prefer to mix my colors on the canvas itself. Even if I have to create a color on my palette, I only create a mid-tone of the desired color, and build the lights and darks by adding pure, straight-out-of-the-tube color on the canvas.
As you can see from the first photo, I started with the iris of the right eye. In this photo, I started building up the skin tone putting a thin glaze over the cheek, nose, and right eye. In college (after for a time afterward), I used to mix my own medium using combinations of various chemicals. I've decided to simplify my life and only use Liquin now to dilute my oil paints and create my glazes. At this stage, there is more pigment and less medium used because I want it to be more opaque, but still allow the under-painting to show through.
At this point I was happy with the base flesh tones and darkened the hair and began to define the shadows in the habit. I also began to block in one darker layer for the background
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