El Greco Laconian Hoplite - Starting the Flesh

As I said before, I have a lot of projects on the fire these days. This great bust from El Greco was on my want list for quite awhile and after recently purchasing it I put it high on my "to do" list. It has been sitting primed, on my bench for a month so last Sunday night I decided to start on the flesh.

 

I decided to try broadening my pallet for the basic flesh mid-tones, adding some tonal value changes in the basic mix rather than my standard technique. The flesh started with straight Burnt Sienna but I used, Green, Indigo, Alizarin Crimson and Brownish Madder to modify the warmth and hue of the colors prior to doing my first wet-on-wet blending. So what you see here is the outcome of these mid tones. Next I will tackle shadows and hair base tones as well as the eyes. A friday night project if ever there was one.