WIP: People ask me if I use a pencil to sketch in the figure before starting. I do not. I paint in guidelines very quickly first, making sure that those simple few lines carry the composition and emote what there is to emote. Then I block in the shadows, either warm or cool, depending, then put a light wash of sepia over the whole thing. I can tell you this, that this painting will be the best I've done yet.

A snippet of part of the color pallette; I really liked these color harmonies. I bought a colored rock at the swap meet a few weeks ago and was inspired by the colors and came up with this pallette. This is what I used for the last painting post. Painting sketch is acrylic on bristol vellum bound in a sketchbook. Ron Velasco suggested that I mix my paints on a neutral gray wax paper and it has made all the difference in my color mixing choices and I'll never paint without it again.

A rough start and a weird pallette. Had to go back and saturate the flesh tones a little more to bring the figure out a little more. Happy Valentine's Day!