I'm Not Wearing Any Pants!

Readers with long memories will remember my post entitled "Levi 501 Button Fly Jeans" in which I went to some lengths to describe that moment at which, after having stared at an unfinished painting for long enough, you know what needs to be done; you stand up; and you rip off your jeans so you can commence painting.

"You" in this case obviously means me. And the reason you are ripping your jeans off is so you don't get paint on them. And the reason you wear Levi 501 button flies is that they are the easiest to rip off at a moment's notice.

So, in the interest of clarity, and of honest communication, and to help communicate the reality of being me during this year of magical painting, I feel obliged to tell you that I've taken these pictures with my Canon 620 but without my pants.

I'm not wearing any shoes either--as you can tell by the presence on the right side of the following images of my sock-shod toes--but I didn't think that fact made as dramatic a headline as "I'm not wearing any pants!"

But enough with the marketing strategies. Let's get back to the matter at hand--namely, the sequence of photos below. This, as you may be able to tell, is the beginning of the sequence of photos that will chronicle the creation of the painting hereafter known as "Stephanie C. (Blue Stephanie)" or, more simply, Blue Stephanie.

You may also remember the plan I laid out in the previous post. Part of it went like this:

So I see the dark blue checkerboard effect on squares 1, 3, 8 and 16.

At the same time, I see squares 5, 9, 13 and 17--what you might call the shadow squares--as being blue as well, bleeding up against the brightly lit portions of her face--the right side of the nose, the chin, the front and side of the forehead.

Mission accomplished. I then continued:

"As for the pink--I'm all over 6, 11, 15 and 18. I see cream on the rest."

This is the pink:



And this is the cream:



And this last one is more pink and cream, and then some black, which you can't really see but which will be instrumental in blurring the lines between, say, the left side of her forehead (which should be hidden in shadow) and the right (which is brightly illuminated).

And the dribbling of red--which is really just intense pink, or pink without the white--helps pull the whole thing together.



Thus far, the plan is working.