Project 2273: Mexican Sunset

In this final painting session, I finished some areas I hadn’t gotten to yet: the beach sand, the table with its beer bottles and fish, and the border highlights on the body–those finishing touches that really make the painting come to life. Aaaaand we’re done!

I did a lot in this second session: Laid in the sky and the palm fronds, doing my best to soften all the edges, because I want this painting to have a lot of lost edges; began putting in the colors of the body, which have to be just the right value because it’s all in shadow, yet it still needs to read as not too dark; and tackling the ocean and the boat, again doing my best to soften all the edges.

After many studies, I’m finally ready to tackle the main event: the full-size painting. I begin as usual by covering the pencil underdrawing with an acrylic wash (burnt umber and dioxazine purple). Then I begin applying color.

Painting a face and figure where it’s mostly in shadow with a brighter background is tricky…so I thought I’d better do a second exploratory study just focusing on the face and upper body.

Since the subject matter in this case presented a lot of new challenges for me (a more complicated composition than usual, elements I don’t usually paint like a table with fish and beer bottles, tricky backlight, etc.), I knew I’d benefit by doing some acrylic studies first. These are incredibly helpful in terms of working out color mixtures, relative values, and just giving the artist more confidence before tackling a challenging painting.