(Actual) Painting 1: "The Lady Rider"

END RESULT:

(for now, this is what I showed at critique, but it still needs work)

CLOSE-UP:

Dress and Texture

THE PROCESS:

 painting in my studio... 

...apartment.

 with a limited pallet:

alizarin crimson, cadmium red med, cad yellow med, cobalt blue, raw umber, and titanium white.

I find that having an extremely limited pallet challenges me to create every color from scratch, and I usually only use umbers for the under-paintings and force myself to mix browns from primaries as will, so that my colors are consistent. It also keeps me from being lazy ;)

The underpainting and beginning of wall texture 

 Underneath the finished pretty face is this super scary one! (above)

My friend Maya came over and painted with me in the last stages

This was her first painting... EVER!

Then Jasmine, the star of the painting came over, and made silly faces to inspire me:

 (my muse!)

And of course, taking breaks for music was a crucial part of the creative process :)

Mini Painting

Playing around with the idea of the figure sleeping in the circus bus, the way I remember it. This is what came of it:

The Process: First I did an underpainting, then painted the bed w/ red sheets, then roughly applied paint to the surfaces I knew I'd be sanding (blues).

sanded it down in certain areas,

 and came out with this:

 then painted the figure into the space:

Still needs a lot of imagination and sorting out in terms of light sources, perspective, and re-creating the interior of the bus based on my memory.

By the end of this study, I had decided to save this painting for later and focus on the image of the Horse Rider coming home. I thought it'd be good to start with an image based on a photograph I took, something simple to allow me to establish a textural language for the series.