What Was, Was, But Isn't Anymore And Won't Be

Three years of painting and you're not the painter you were, you're more discerning, more critical, more insistent upon getting the light right, creating a sense of volume on a surface that has no volume. JD, I Gotta Crow, was flat. He was far from my idea of okay let it go, move on.  Yesterday I laid into him--the background, his arm in shadow, his shirt edge fading into the brightly lighted background.   In other words, I began repainting him with all the smarts I picked up since 2012.

I also photographed my progress manually setting my digital SLR.  My ISO was set at 400; the White balance was set to incandescent, the general lighting in my windowless studio; the Image Mode to PC, which geared the photo for being seen on a personal computer.  The colors are as close to accurate as any photographic translation can make them.

See the difference: Yesterday's tear in

JD in progress three years after the start:  Concentrating on painting the light, not the figure.
 

 A backlighted situation is a tough reference photo especially when the photographer (me) didn't know to use the flash to bring out the forms in the foreground.  Today, I would take the reference differently--manually setting my digital according to the lighting situations.  Today, three years of painting later, I can fix elaborate on the forms without caring that the reference is poor.  Yesterday, I washed  out the background and started to soften the exterior edge of his shirt. I lightened up the forefront of his face and began developing the volume in is right arm.  This painting may be my Mona Lisa--the painting I work on . for sixteen years, but I doubt it.  I'll get to good enough again and stop

 2012 doctored just slightly on the overhang the day before yesterday when I obliterated it and got into every part of it knowing what I didn't know in 2012.

The initial start three years ago was okay, but not what I knew it could be, knowing what I know now.