"Just A Thought" 9x12", And a Lesson in Painting the Eye

Terry stopped in to pose for our Open Studio session last night.  Since I had been painting all that day, I was warmed up and ready to go.  I put down thick paint with a bare minimum of detail.  I decided to stop painting as soon as I had a good gesture.  If I noodled it with it any more, I think I would have killed the spontaneity.

In my Monday Evening Portrait class, we have been working on painting features.  Here is my method for painting an eye ( I used a #2 filbert brush for the entire process):

 We will use a photo of Christy for our model.

 After putting down a base of light skin tone, I find the entire shadow area of the eye socket.  I put this in with a middle value of purple warmed with a bit of cadmium red.

 On the top of the shadow form, I paint in the brow with a dark mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna.

 Once the brow is in, I can see where the iris belongs.  Using the same mixture as the brow, I loosely paint in the iris.

I add the lash line with the same dark mixture.

 I add the "white" of the eye, which in reality is a very light gray.  I find the lid crease and darken it.

 And now for the fun part-- the details!  I highlighted the lid and the brow bone.  I darkened the shadow underneath the eye to give it more dimension.  Then I added a hint of red in the tear duct and placed a tiny highlight on the eye between the pupil and the colored area of the eye.  I lightened the eye color on the bottom half of the iris.  Voila!