Painting a Portrait, Part 2

Sorry it's been so long since I have updated on this portrait. I've included a few steps in this section...

Here I'm beginning to add skin tone colors. I normally start with the forehead and eye area- this normally sets the what the skin tone will be like for the rest of the face and body-how warm or cool, what hues I use for shadows and highlights, etc.

And here are the colors that I'm using and mixing on my palette to create the skin tone.

The hues for the mid range for the value of the skin is a mixture of cadmium red and cadmium yellow light. From this, add either zinc white or flake white to lighten the pigment to the mid range.

                            
I use alizaren crimson for the next value/intensity level below the mid range. So this would be the lighter shadows. To make a slightly darker shadow than this, I add cerulean blue.

For the very darkest shadows, I use a mixture of alizaren crimson and ultramarine blue. For me, this combination will always push an area back in space. I suppose if you wanted to go even darker, you could add phthalo green- or if you feel your shadows have more brown and green in them, you could replace the cerulean blue and ultramarine blue with the phthalo and a burnt umber or other brown.

Next I have finished more of the face with these colors.

And now the chest area.

And finally, at this point I will add some color to the hair. Right now I am using a combination of burnt umber and cadmium red, with some ultramarine blue in the shadows. I'm not sure if I want her hair to be dark brown or red, so I will leave the underpainting in these tones for now.

 I think the background will really determine what color her hair ends up being.