Sorry, My Dance Card is Filled

I'll probably bore you to death with tales of this one. After one get acquainted sketch, I'm certain there's lots of studies to be done. The tilt of her head,the twist of her neck, the limpness in one hand while the other clutches a crumpled napkin are all challenging-- as is the flat finish with minimal shading I'm after. Between individual pencil and paint studies and working out the color pallet to mix in bulk, I'd say my dance card is pretty full over the next months with these two figures, the one pictured above and the other reflected below dust-free.



What a difference a little cleaning will do for a reflection photo on a monitor screen. To avoid gathering great gobs of dust again on my screen, I used an old photography friend: a mixture of a drop of liquid dish detergent, (Joy works best), to a pint of water. Negative strips wiped with this solution repelled dust--something you want to do in a big way in the darkroom. For the I-only-know-about-digital-crowd, a darkroom is a room from the olden days where an art driven photographer spent hours developing my own film, printing my own photos and creating my own special effects. Dust was my enemy; this solution, my friend. Time will tell if it works on a monitor screen.