I’ve wanted to try a monochromatic painting for a long time, and I really had fun with this. Some artists do something similar to this as an underpainting and then glaze on other colours. I  sketch in the basic composition with my paintbrush  to start off, but I usually can’t resist jumping in with colour soon after. This time I planned to keep the painting somewhat monochromatic, but I added a few extra colours to keep it interesting to me. I used burnt umber, raw sienna, titanium white and dioxazine purple.

I found that working on the 6″x6″ paintings I was using smaller & smaller brushes to get the detail I wanted, so I decided to work on a little bigger canvas so that I can loosen up. It really helped. Although I still painted on two days (last night & this morning), I wasn’t feeling as rushed because I was enjoying myself more.

I have a lot of great reference photos from this photo shoot, I’d like to try a much larger canvas some time. If that sounds interesting to you …e-mail me about a commission! We can work out payment terms to suit your budget. Also, please share this post to let your friends know about my work … maybe they’d like to follow my progress through the challenge as well.

Today’s painting marks the half-way point, two more weeks to go!