The Making of Gypsy Girl

 Paint From Life!

"Paint From Life" is perhaps THE phrase that I hear most often from my art teachers. Painting from life is particularly helpful when painting figures. Photographs don’t quite capture the lights and shadows that are so relevant to painting. Additionally, photographed colors are often washed out – whiter and lighter than actuality. That being said, I have learned that reference photos are particularly helpful. I always take a photo of the setup, a close-up of the figure’s face and close up of the hands (if applicable). I find that I often cannot finish a painting in a 3 hour life painting session (despite working on a relatively small 11x14 or 12x16 canvas). The ultimate lesson is to get down what you can in your initial painting session with live model, focusing on composition and color.

For Gypsy Girl, I painted most of the composition in the 3 hour Life session. I placed the head, arms, dress layers, couch and background colors. My main focus was getting the shapes in place. And, I managed to get many of the colors (darks and mid tones) down.

Once home, I used my reference photos (on the computer) and started adding my lights and darks. I also put the up-close face photo reference on my computer and used that to complete (with small brushes) the face—including that nose shadow. Next, I worked on the skirt layer definition, adding lights and darks to get the draped folds. Lastly I added highlights to the top of the arms and to the white blouse (not pure white, a lightened Naples Yellow). Even this photo of the painting (because it is a photo) seems a bit washed out -the colors in the photo as in life are a bit brighter...

Our model this day was a fellow artist’s daughter, who is in high school. She seemed so grown up that I thought she was in college. She had dark eyebrows and light green eyes with dark hair – really wonderful. Of course her costume was lots of colors and layers, very fun to paint!

Gypsy Girl, 12x16, oil on canvas.