Painting #275 - Oct 26 - The portrait is finally done

I've been telling you about it, and today I had to work at the Gallery so I worked on this painting pretty much all day, which was way too many hours. I originally started this on claybord, and I didn't like the results, then I tried it on Aquabord, and again, I didn't like the results, so, I got out the Arches 140# watercolor paper and that seemed to work much better, at least the paint went where I wanted it to. I was using the opaque watercolors again, I really had to keep moving that paint around, I think this might have been a beautiful oil painting, but that isn't what my friend wanted, she liked the watercolors, so I managed, it is a bit dark, I'm hoping she doesn't think it's too dark, part of that is the opaques, they dry darker than they look wet, and transparent watercolors dry lighter, I might try a transparent one if she doesn't like this one, but, for now, this is my painting. It will be difficult to explain how this was painted, since I worked it and re-worked it, and then re-worked it again, it seemed dark, but it just wouldn't get lighter, the background was laid in wet in wet, then wet on dry to finish it, the face and arms were painted wet in wet to start and then wet on dry to fine tune, I moved the right eye up and down, a couple of times, with the opaques, it worked, but with transparent it might not, I should try doing one in transparent just for the fun of it, to see if I can. One of my difficulties is that I have astigmatism, which makes me get things out of whack a bit, then I have to make adjustments constantly, I think it's right then I look again and it's off, I wish I could get laser surgery to correct it, but that costs money I don't have, plus, I wear trifocals and I'd still have to wear glasses, but at least I wouldn't have the trouble getting portraits aligned correctly. Well, I like this portrait, and I hope you do too.

Ok, I screwed up, I had ro repair this painting, it was brought to my attention that I had 5 fingers and a thumb on this painting, so I fixed it.