I got caught up in the work yesterday, so I failed to stop and take a picture when I finished blocking in the skin areas. With so few areas and small space, it didn’t take long to do, so I quickly moved into the detail work.
After creating the main contours of the skin with colored pencils and oil pastels blended in, I used colored pencils on top to refine the facial features. I also used more oil pastels to build up more depth and color in the cheeks and nose. I continued down, adding details to the neck and arms, then the thighs (mostly just subtle shadows around the clothing). Before going back to the face for the make-up design, I painted the fingers using gouache. It’s a bit of a trick matching the skin tones to the oil pastels on the arms, especially since gouache dries a different tone than it is when wet (one of many reasons I no longer use only paint in my work). Luckily, gouache is easy to rework by getting it moist again, so I would add a bit of color here and there to mix it on the board until it matched to my liking. Next, I painted the nails green and also the little ribbon showing in her left glove. While this yellow-green mix of paint was still wet on the palette, I painted very lightly some highlight edging on the dress to help bring it out away from the background.
The the paint done, I returned to oil pastels, this time using them with a brush dipped in turpenoid. I painted the eyeliner with black, adding lashes as well. Then I mixed a dark green and painted the make-up. I didn’t realize it is very similar to the character ‘Dawn’ by Linsner until I was adding the highlights to the drips. Perhaps it was in my subconscious, but I really didn’t want to repeat someone else’s work. At least mine has numerous drips and is green, so not a direct copy, thankfully.
I’m content with it today, so I’ve scanned and uploaded to the website, ready to view here.

Poison