Waiting for Some Color

I paint with alkyd oil paints. I am just too impatient to wait for the paint to dry and the alkyds dry quickly, usually in a couple of hours. Recently I decided that I would try and paint people in color. More specifically, I thought I'd change eras for a bit and use photographs from the 1970s. I like how the photos back then had an orange tinge to them and we all remember what we used to wear back then, right? I'm thinking these paintings will be fun and a new challenge for me. They will still be in the "Forgotten Memories" style (aka bars over their eyes and a waxy finish).

I was all ready to start last week but didn't have the right colors. (I actually did try painting with the colors that I had, and it was disastrous!) Usually I just drive on over to my local Pearl's art store and get my alkyds there, but sadly, they closed. What is even sadder is that the remaining art stores in San Francisco don't carry alkyds and I had to order them online. So now I am waiting, patiently, for my paints to arrive so that I can do some experimenting. They are supposed to arrive on Wednesday, which means I should be ready to go on Thursday of next week.

In the meantime, I started another "B&W" one. (Technically they are done in raw umber and white, hence the quotation marks.) I will be doing a number of these pieces throughout the year and here is the first one:

Close-up of the newest painting.

Newest painting with original photo attached.

This is still in the underpainting painting phase. In fact, I still have a lot of underpainting to do... I should probably be done with this one next week, just in time to start a colored one!