Portrait of Inna, 10x14"

Inna is a student at Mainstreet who came in to model for us the other day.  After laying in a thin wash of paint with my brush, I took my palette knife to it to punch up the difference in my values and to lend the painting more of an impressionistic feel.  For the background, I brushed on a bright orange color and followed it up with mixtures of white, blue, and green applied with my palette knife.  This technique of layering complementary colors over a bright background allows the color to "sit behind" the model, which is always desirable!