Asher: Step 3
Working with titanium white, cad red, burnt umber, yellow ochre and ivory black, I begin to paint the flesh tones onto/into the sketch. The un-thinned colors are so powerful in comparison to the thinned colors of the sketch that they dominate them completely with only the slightest blending. I find that it is almost always easier to paint dark to light, first with the mid-tones, and then with the deep shadows and highlights. Blending dark paint into light usually seems to yield a muddy, clumsy looking effect, while blending light into dark is much easier to control, and looks smoother. (The former can be done well, but it takes a lot more time and skill with a brush.) I think a lot of beginning painters who are used to pencil or charcoal drawing where all work is necessarily done from light to dark run into this problem. It is much harder to create a fine line with paint that with a pencil, and beginners often end up with exaggerated shadows and dark lines in their painting because they loose control of the dark colors while trying to blend them into the lighter ones.
Not to let Ernie feel left out, I worked a little more on him as well.
