Michael Miniatures George I - Post #2

I promised that I would post "regular" updates on my progress with this beautiful bust and I keep my promises, but boy do I hate showing things at the stage that this is at. I started painting the face, hair and white satin over the last two days and all of these areas are far enough along that they are recognizable but not far enough along that any one could possibly get much from it. However, maybe I can share my thought process to this point.

The first thing that anyone who knows me well will notice is the blue acrylic base coat. No I haven't gone mainstream, sold the farm or whatever, but yes I decided to lay down a bit of acrylic basecoat. I'm not sure what possessed me to do this but maybe I will gain a day on this figure by doing so. My plan is to mix Prussian Blue and Ultramarine Blue to get the initial shade I am looking for and this will leave me with a more transparent mix than I like. So I hit the figure with some Jo Sonja Ultramarine acrylic.

The face is a lightened mix of Burnt Sienna, Prussian Blue, with Medium Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White to start pulling the highlights. A bit of Alizarin Crimson was applied wet on the lips and blended in. The eyes were started with an outline wash of Liquitex Extra Deep Cadmium Red with Burnt Umber for the initial eyeball laid down. I will carry on with shadows and highlights tonight and tomorrow. To check my facial tones I applied an initial wash of Burnt Umber to the hair.

Now the white is another matter. I started with a mix of Raw Umber and Titanium White, various shades of which were applied to the different white areas of cloth as seen in the painting shown directly above. Further shadows and highlights were applied with either of the two colors used to create the mix in the first place. As you will note in the painting there should be a lot of reflected light and color in the satin and silk and my way of tricking the eye was to add light touches of Dioxazine Purple in certain areas like the waistcoat and sleeve that are nearest to the Crimson Velvet sash. A final wash of Raw Umber was applied around edges and deepest shadows. After this dries I will start to layer glazes of Titanium White which will bring out the highlights and pop the reflected highlights.

So hopefully this "ugly duckling" stage will keep everyone appeased for the next day or two until my next post.