Alright!  Pending an overnight waiting period, I think Bailey’s done!  What do you think?  Any comments?

How did I get from that sort of Dresden blue look underpainting to this?  Lots of layers!
I got the background laid in, most of the color in Bailey herself, stepped back, and wasn’t happy.  I went away, had some lunch, came back, and saw that I just hadn’t been brave enough (my usual foe: timidity!), resulting in a lack of contrast.  So I really poured on (okay, not literally “poured”) more deep blue, more violet, and even some golden yellow.  That helped!  Then I had to overcome that timidity again to work back into Bailey’s face with more depth of color and contrast.  You can see the violet on her shadow side, but can you see the Naples yellow washing in from the lighter side?  There’s also some burnt umber in the darkest areas to neutralize and darken the deepest darks, and even glazed very lightly over the shadow side to warm her and give an overall feel of living warmth to her against the cool background.  Final touches in either warmed or cooled white to pull the highest highlights back to the top, and finis!

I hope.  We’ll see in the morning.

In the mean time, it’s on to Hubble, the Chinese Crested, which should be a blast!  I’ll give him his own posts, though.

In the time it took me to write this, while the painting dried enough to scan, looking at it again revealed another area of timidity; her nose!  So, I’ve added a bit more work there, which means a bit more here and over there and a bit more right here ….  Just in case you thought all this was easy!  😉