Progress on paintings

Here's some further progress on the street painting and the portrait of Eric (2 sittings so far, 2 hours each, hopefully another one today). I also worked more on the painting of Zakiya, but after that session, I decided that I didn't like where things were going and needed an alternative way to handle the dress. Taking my inspiration from Gainsborough and many others I saw at the Huntington gallery here in LA, I decided to spend one 1.5 hr sitting just nailing down the form of the dress in a separate drawing, to serve as an absolute baseline. I intend to do a color study next time, and I will probably end up painting the dress without her present, just using her as reference for finishing.

What I like about this approach is that I can experiment with simplifying the folds to obtain broader masses, but if I screw up, i always have that to go back to. I also have no time constraints and next time she poses, she can move around a little when she's tired since the folds are established. Since I won't be constantly modifying the folds, I think this will lead to a better finish.

Also, I'm available for commissioned work, and a most of my paintings up here are for sale. Contact me for further details