We're gonna start by blocking the light side first, and we're going to be doing what's called a color lane. So it's basically a flat color, just getting the color shape blocked in. And what we're really going to be capturing is the sense of fall off to the light, sort of light sources coming down on the model, which is the it's a self portrait, and it gets progressively darker as it moves down away from the light source that's called fall off. So I'll show you how I would just do that making it a bit darker as we go. Don't do anything on the shadow side yet. We'll work that separately in the next stage.

Also, I've got a brush you'll want to use, like a fairly large brush. You could use something like this. This is the bristle brush with stiff bristles. This is a graner brush Princeton, greener brush. It's springy, it's large. Whatever you use, use something Large at this stage.

So I'm just going to dip into the base flesh color. And you can use a teeny bit of oil but not too much actually, you want the lights to be like physically built up. And I'm going to start with the most saturated area of color which tends to be the top of the forehead. And you can see as I put it on that feels too saturated and too light. So I'm going to D saturate by adding a little bit of gray, not too much, and just mix that into a base flesh color. And then I'll just try another dab and that feels better.

And so we're going for a color that's kind of a middle tone, rotating the lightest lights at this stage, we're kind of going for even a slightly darker version of the kind of mid tones of the light that'll leave some room to lighten up on top of that just leaves room to go if you start to light, it'll be To white everywhere, and there's no nowhere to go from there. So as I move down the face, I'm going to make a little bit of transparent red oxide or burn seanna. It's basically the same color, just different names into the base, flesh color. And just apply that I'm going to also make this a little more gray, even a little bit more transparent red oxide. And letting the strokes cross over the lines. That's really important.

You don't want to have like little bits of the underpainting showing through almost like an outline in your painting. So I know it's a little bit scary or afraid that you'll lose the drawing but let it just cross over. And if you really start to freak out, and you wonder where your eye when you can take a rag and sort of bring it back to we can we can find it again. So cross over the lines As I move into the lights of the eye socket, that plane that undercut plane is darker you know than the top plane of the forehead. So I've darkened it a little bit with the base shadow color, and it's just a little bit darker a little bit D saturated in toe in saturation. And so I'm just getting that in and then as we move back to the top plane, facing the light source of the cheeks, I'm going to mix the base flesh color.

Let's move that palette knife, the base flesh color with a little bit of red, you could use either red, I'm using a little bit of a lizard and permanent a little bit of a pinky red to get and I'll use a little cat red to to get the pink Enos to the cheek so we're looking to get the flat color lay and that darkens as it moves down the face and has a little bit The changes in local color that occur as we move across the face from this cheek to this cheek, the color gets a little darker and a little D saturated. So I'm just mixing a bit of gray into the color even a little bit more, sometimes you'll find that when it gets blended together these shifts that you make in color become more subtle, you know than when you first put them down.

So you might make the changes just a little bit stronger than you think they need to be without being like too strong. You definitely don't want it to be too strong. Mixed a bit of gray in to get the slight definition where the nose overlaps the cheek. This is a pretty last edge. Meaning we only barely see it we don't see that much of a line there. So make sure to keep this really subtle, pretty understated and that will work well.

As we move to the nose, the nose has a little bit of a pink Enos as well noses and ears and fingertips normally do. So I'm just bringing a little bit more pinkness that the cat red light into the nose. And then gonna continue down through the face, I'm going to add a little bit of the variety in green. You can mix these colors in so many different ways. So it's important not to get too caught up in like how to mix the color. I could have mixed a little bit of blue or a little bit of gray, gray into the base flesh color to achieve basically the exact same looking color.

But in this case, I've chosen to use a little bit of variety in green. I'm also going to add just a little bit of transparent red oxide, which helps darken the color. So what I want to achieve and again, there's so many different ways of doing it is that it's getting darker as it was Down the face, and it's getting D saturated, so it's brighter more orange up here. And it's more kind of gray ish down here. And it's darker. And it sometimes looks a little bit weird this light color lay in phase, almost like I have a four o'clock shadow or something.

But when it all blends together and you get all the details on, it won't look that way at all. It'll just have this sense of form in the sense of the fall off to the light. Another thing is that in terms of the direction of the brushstroke that I'm using, I'm painting with what's called across the form on brush strokes. So let's see. So for example, if you imagine like the shape of the face, it goes this way, like the shape of the jaw goes that way. When I'm applying the stroke, I'm painting across the form like this kind of perpendicular to the edge and talk more about this in the essential skills section of the course.

But painting across the forum actually enhances the sense of form and really improves your paintings. It's one of the most common mistakes is to paint with the form. So really get in the habit of painting across the form and review the essential skill section where I talk more about that for the lip, the lower lip so the upper lip isn't in shadow, so don't do anything to the upper lip yet. And then for the lower lip, just use base flash color, mix with a little bit of CAD red light to make a color that's just a little bit pink here but it's the same tone as the skin around it. Then I'm also gonna just finish off with the, the jaw area on the right, I mean a bit of green a bit of the base flesh color, and there's also a little bit of red in here.

And again, red and green are complements. And maybe I'll even I mean, this is the red and green here, the base flesh vs shadow side color, they basically just de saturate each other while making it kind of rich and interesting. And it darkens the color and it could be a little darker. So I'm adding a bit more of that red, green complementary mixture of the base shadow color. And, and I put it in with the form in this case, so following the shape of the end, but that flattens out the form. So for a final touch, I'm going to wiggle across the form perpendicular to the shape of the edge.

And that's how I would do that. So since the light source is coming down on the figure, and we've got that fall off through the face where it gets darker as it moves down to the face, I'm gonna also make the body have so that sense of fall off making the colors of the lights in the body A little darker. So I've mixed some transparent red oxide into the base flash color, as well as a little green to desaturate. And we're just gonna bring a coat throughout the whole area before adding any of the little color shifts to it. And it looks like it gets even more desaturated. Towards this, it almost feels a bit cooler.

So I'm mixing a little bit of green in so when you put down a color, you want to judge it based on the three parameters. Is it the right hue? You know? Is it like the right is it orange or blue or whatever? Is it the right tone? Is it like dark enough or light enough?

And is it the right saturation? So you don't want to expect yourself to mix it like exactly correct like right from the start. Instead you put it down and then you adjust it by judging it against those three parameters. A lot of the time The chef's will have like a little bit more of a pink Enos, maybe it gets more sun or something. So I'm bringing a little bit more CAD red light mix with base flesh color that's a little bit too intense writes books too saturated. So I'm going to desaturate that a bit with more base flesh color.

And that's how I would do that. So again, not expecting ourselves to hit it exact from the start but putting in a, you know, your closest shot and then judging it and adjusting it. It kind of takes the pressure away from thinking that it has to be perfect right from the start. And then so we've got the two shoulders so the back shoulders really dark really setting into the distance. I'm going to use some base shadow color mixture with the green and the red, mixed with some base light red color, and a little bit of transparent red oxide. Just put that in Getting that sense of it really sitting back into space and being nice and dark, I'll bring a little bit more of the base light side color into the front of that shoulder just to bring a little bit more connection, you know, from this shoulder into this and actually, I'm also going to bring just a little bit of this darker color into the chest just to help them kind of connect through, there's a little bit more, sort of a darker note through here, and then moving to this shoulder.

Now this part here is true shadow side. But we'll go into this which is the dark light side, using basic flesh color, some transparent red oxide, a little veridian green and just get that overall sense painting across the form. So if the line of the edge goes this, we like the line of the shirt, rather than putting it in like this, which flattens out the form. I'm wiggling Across the form and even crossing over the edge a little bit and we'll restate the edge so you don't need to worry. For now we want to create kind of an interweaving at the end. All right, and then we just need to get a bit of a color for the light side of the hair.

For the hair, we'll use the base flesh color mixed with some yellow ochre and a little gray. blond hair is basically mixed a lot of the time like that base flesh color gray and a bit of yellow ochre. And then again, I'll use a little bit more oil as I do. The hair just has a silkier sort of feel. When I did the lights of the face and figure I hardly used any oil at all. I want the lights to be texturally built up and have more body to them.

So, so yeah, don't use much oil in the light side of the face. But as you move to the hair, maybe use a little more and when we move to the shadows you'll use even more. And then there's this little bit of light side here. It's darker and cooler. So I'm using the base shadow color with a bit of gray mixed into what I used here, which was the base flesh color with some yellow ochre and some gray. Just bring that through there.

You can really wiggle across this edge to let it be totally lost from the face through the hairline and into the light side of the hair. That's important to do. So that's basically the lights blocked in so get your painting up to this stage blocking your lights. Don't do anything in the shadows and we'll do the shadows next.