Book of Days : Limited Palette Portrait

Session 2 of Book of Days began in May. We get a full lesson in BOD every fortnight and I started this month with the intention to keep up this time, and also hopeful that I'll be able to catch up the couple of lessons I missed from Session 1 on the alternating fortnight. By Saturday it hadn't happened and I was wasting even more time trying to decide which lesson to do so I had to speak sternly to myself! I always learn something with every lesson I do, so I'm just starting at session 2, week 1, and I'll circle back if time allows....This lesson combines 3/4 profile portraits, working with charcoal, and limited palettes. Began with the charcoal outline - you can see I'm not working on a clean page in my altered book so this may well help me make decisions about my limited palette! Turquoise is a favourite of mine, but I didn't end up going that way....

Next up was blending - I was needing a new blending stump and found this great set at Gordon Harris with various sizes. The photo also shows my charcoal pencil

Once blended, she's ready for a spray of workable fixative and then a layer of clear gesso so I can add other coloured media without disturbing the charcoal

Added some blended pencil to her face, and then decided I might fill in base layers of dress, hair, background. Decided I'd like a night sky - dripped a bit of water by accident on the black gesso so added more of that....purple is my main colour for limited palette and I used an iridescent for her hair

And then I worked on her, adding layers

until I finally decided she is done

I didn't love using the charcoal, but I was reminded of how much I enjoy the technique of using pencils blended over clear gesso and the gold touches ♥ I just love the process of making art - it makes me feel calm and happy. 
You can sign up for this and other classes by Effy Wild HERE. See my Flickr album of all art work inspired by Effy's classes HERE.