Young Jean Cauvin-Umber Stage 4

I've finally got paint covering the entire canvas! Primarily worked on background on this stage. Detail work to follow.

Young Jean Cauvin-Stage 3

Was able to get a little bit accomplished on this tonight. This will be a monochromatic painting in the style of my self-portrait from last year. The background is much for difficult for me than the face, that's why I've left it to do later... I'll need to paint that upside-down. More to come.

Young Jean Cauvin-Umber Stage 2

I've continued to work on shadows. There is a bit of "personality" showing through now. The eyes are the windows to the soul.

Young Jean Cauvin-Umber Stage 1

I've concentrated on the darkest shadows using burnt umber. In this early stage, I used Liquin as a medium. I keep the layers of paint very thin and try to eliminate as many brush strokes as possible. The shadows in the clerestory is not easy to get right. Many shadows with changing shades of darkness. I'm not sure where the lines begin and where they end!

"Young Jean Cauvin"-Imprimatura

Imprimatura stage on new painting of well-known French Reformer John Calvin. Basically, at this early stage, I've drawn a "cartoon" of the image on the canvas with a ink-gel pen and then applied a very "thin" layer of an olive color mixture of oil paint. The painting at this stage is very 2-dimensional. The next stage I will concentrate on shadows and thereby take the painting into the appearance of three dimensions.