Ursula O'Farrell workshop, day 2: 16x20"

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 16x20x1.5"

This was a longer pose, done with a lot of palette knife; you can see on the lower right where I dragged paint down with it. The yellow and red background are the base coat (stormy!), and you can see by the shadows on the shoulders and the lower back that this was lit upwards.

Several people have seen defiance in this; sort of a feeling of standing up to something. It wasn't intentional, but might have been a natural part of the pose.

Now, when I painted this, I used colors approximating skin tones, and it came out too realistic, like an impressionistic portrait rather than an abstract work. So I changed the skin color to the blues and lavenders you see, with yellow for the brightest spots. I've been hearing for years that no matter what color the elements of a painting are, if you get the values right, you can still tell what the painting depicts. This might support that.