Deliberation: Step 5
Before moving on to the over-painting on the legs, which would represent a very large area of uninterrupted flesh-tones painted in a still somewhat experimental technique, I decided to paint the polished concrete floor on which the figure is sitting. This was pretty straight forward, as I had really good scrap of the concrete surface (though in the photos the surface consisted of a concrete coffee table, and I had to extrapolate the effect to the edges of the composition). Once that was complete, I started work on the legs, the right (and in this composition, the most distant and simplest) first. By the time I had finished work on the right leg, using the same basic technique as I had on the right arm, I was feeling much more confident with the new technique. In fact, the left leg, which should have been the most difficult part of the painting, was finished in only two six hour sessions, and turned out to be what I still consider to be some of my finest flesh painting to date. Even the foot went smoothly, the complex anatomical layout having been completely taken care of by the under-painting. So far, I’m loving this technique.
