FIRST SITTING: Step 1
Map out proportions with vine charcoal on linen with a grey ground.
FIRST SITTING: Step 2
Mix up half tones (*the true colour of an object without light or shade) of each component of the picture (hair, background, top) on the palette and apply them thickly to the canvas with a palette knife. Spread the paint with a brush.
FIRST SITTING: Step 3
Apply flesh half tone.
FIRST SITTING: Step 4
Fuse hair into background and find the edge of the coat. Leave no uncovered canvas.
FIRST SITTING: Step 5
Suggest facial features by working deliberately into wet flesh half tone. Refine the edge of the hair and coat.
FIRST SITTING: Step 6
Now work into cheeks and forehead, warming areas and begin to add highlights, making sure the hue of the highlight is correct. Since this is the first sitting, use fast drying opaque earth colours only. Yellow ochre, raw umber, vermilion red, burnt siena (lead white, ivory black).
FIRST SITTING: Complete
Finished first sitting - 2 hours work.
SECOND SITTING: Step 7
With the canvas dry since the last sitting, darken areas of the coat with black mixed with a medium of turps and linseed oil. Move on to naturally transparent colours - scarlet lake, transparent red oxide, Indian yellow, rose madder. The half tone of the coat underneath allows you not to stray too far from the true colour of the coat.
SECOND SITTING: Step 8
As with step 7, continue to add detail to eyes and mouth.
THIRD SITTING: Last step
On this sitting mix naturally transparent colours like on the last sitting, with cold pressed linseed oil, thus adhering to the 'fat over lean' rule (the lower layers being thicker, full of pigment with relatively low oil content - lean paint. The upper transparent layers having a relatively high content of linseed oil - fat paint). This rule greatly lowers the chances of cracking. Total painting time, 5 hours.
For further details about the 'direct' painting technique refer to 'American Painters on Technique 1860 - 1945' by Lance Mayer and Gay Myers.
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