Painting with Plantie Tuesday! #8 - A New Face! Mita :)

Hey everyone :) If you follow me on Facebook youll see this weekend I began a new painting! This is for my upcoming collection "Fragile Things".
This is a large close up portrait of a lovely lady named Mita, who was kind enough to take a photo for me and deal with my nonsensical rough sketches hehe.
Today I documented several hours work trying to begin work on her face.
At this stage I had already:

• Put in a basic abstract background (which was really fun to make btw!)
• Spend several hours putting in base coats of solid color everywhere else

Everything starts out rough. See here with my reference picture, and a color test

 This is how it looked...yesterday I believe. I had an A4 copy of the original reference picture from Mita, and a color test sketch I made printed out so that I could do the base colors and start some rough shadows...it stays rough for some time ^^

my palette is a never ending force of messy

 You can see all the colors Ive used so far here - ranging from white, yellow ochre, quinacridone red, burnt umber and sienna, black, paynes grey, a few greens......I think that just about covers it :P

oof so rough. but it always is.

 I start adding more and more rough shades to it. It always looks really wonky especially here. It takes so so so many layers to get things to work smoothly.

this is only the first real layer of what will be probably 20 + :P

 I start my first smoothing layer, where I paint over dark bits and transition it into the base color.

Be prepared for bangs!

 After adding more dark spots to the shadow areas, I especially try to cover her forehead as shell be having bangs on top!

not one, but 2 black eyes haha! oh and the bangs come in at the end :)

 While I wait for the forehead to dry, I try to get some good colors in for her undereyes, trying to make them look more real. It is quite dark I know, but it was a good test to see what worked, and what didnt.

evening out slowly the shades around the eyes

some lip stick!

 Besides flowers, one thing I want to be a seam going through the collection is stained lips. I started the base of this here. Still working out how to do this best! But I'll get there :P

Mita, as she stands over at my desk

 So right now I am about...Id say half way or so through completing her face.
What I need to do now is:

• Finish evening out her under eyes
• Finish her bangs and her eyebrows
• Finish her lips
• Finish her nose

The cheeks are okay for now, but I may try out my glazing medium to add some blush. My attempts so far with glazing medium have been cruel lol. But - I have to keep trying.

Hope you all have enjoyed my process so far! Fingers crossed I can keep working at it till she looks as beautiful as she does in real life :D