Step by Step 2010 – day 2

Now that the first pass on the face is done, the rest of the body is generally smooth sailing.  I'll approach the body shape by shape, as if each area created by the sketch is a separate little painting.  As I've said in the past, there are probably some huge advantages to working on the entire painting at the same time, slowly bringing all the elements toward the final product together, but I really prefer working with wet paint -- if I attack the whole piece at the same time, there's no way i'll be able to fully render the first pass of any part of it in one sitting. maybe there's a happy medium of the two approaches, but I haven't found it yet (or maybe I have, and i'm already there, who knows).

here I'm following basically the same approach with values as I did with the face: start with mids, then work dark and light from those mids. highlights and deepest darks last. I find that establishing a middle value first gives me the most accurate base to render darks and lights. they will almost always need to be pushed darker (and lighter) when I get into the glazing, but it's much easier for me to do it this way than have to back down values that I may have pushed too far on this first pass.

this part is a bit of an experiment. I generally save any drippy sloppy bits for studies, but I've been wanting to try it on a big piece. It's definitely something that won't look right until the whole piece is done, so I'm not going to over-think it too much now.