Oil Painting lesson with Gregory Smith - Day 6

Today, I started to paint a table on which a cast stands, and darkened a background a bit.
Also, I changed an angle of its base. It looked leaning too much forward, so I changed an angle of its base line. I looks more stable now.

Greg did a demo on this one, showing us how to build a shape in the face.
He covered its right side with a big brush stroke using dark tones. And then, put light tones on where needed, keeping it loose and bold.

Can you see small highlights he left on its forehead? By doing so, he can compare the tone of other areas to these lightest tones. Very clever.

It's amazing to watch how the shape starts to emerge without any details.
Rather than focusing just on its obvious features, like eyes or nose, he said it's also very important to see the area in-between.

Then, I messed its top right corner where his hair is supposed to be.
He reminded me of the process, where we put dark first and then lighter tones, not the other way around. That's I was doing on this area. It now looks like he's got hones sticking out, and shaved undercut!
So, I wiped it off.

He said, next week I will start to give it more definite shape by sculpting with tones and the direction of brush strokes.
I'm very excited.

Work in progress. 16 x 20 in.