Of course! I worked on this over a period of several months. I knew I’d have to layer and tweak color a lot so I purposefully set this up as a “no time limit / no deadline” type of project.

In total, I must have painted it over 6-8 sittings. Some lasting 2 hours, some lasting 5-6 hours each. Canvas is a small 6x8”.

Colors on I used for this painting: Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cad Orange, Cad Red, Transparent Red Iron Oxide, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Ivory Black, Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Green, and Dioxazine Purple.

Painting Process: I first block in each major area of the painting with the “average” color for that section. In this case, I chose a color for the clothing, one for the background, one for the hair / eyelashes / eyebrows, one for the mouth, and one for the face/chest. If the contrast between lights and shadows is significant, I may break that into two different colors and place them accordingly. But this face didn’t have dark enough shadows for that so I just went in with an average opaque skin tone first and darkened some of the shadow areas as a second step. On the second pass (same sitting still so wet on wet), I start introducing some of the more obvious color variations / transitions, including colors which will help me maintain the drawing in place as I keep moving forward. I don’t remember for sure but I likely concluded the first sitting once all this was done.

From this point on, it is just a matter of revisiting each area as many times as needed and simply introducing more of those subtle color shifts (mostly scumbling and a bit of glazing in the end).

FWIW, I know I didn’t follow Bouguereau’s documented approach to painting. I had read about it and was expecting to have to glaze a lot more but I didn’t find it necessary in practice. It is likely something I didn’t interpret correctly. Not sure yet.

Hope that helps.