Portrait of Us (As of Jan. 31, 2017)

Yesterday, I returned to this project, a portrait that I am painting of this couple.  I am working from one of their vacation photos, which shows them in Greece, riding on a motorbike, and wearing sunglasses and helmets.  Back in December, I did a pencil sketch as preparation (posted here, December 14, 2016). I traced the main lines of the pencil sketch onto the canvas to start, and then switched to acrylic paint. Since then, I have been working in thin layers of paint, using only brown and white. But yesterday, I finally started to add more color.  I started with the blue background on the left, and tried to work out where the reflected blue light was hitting the faces. It is a lot of fun to add color, but the tricky bit is to do so without losing the likeness.  I also added blue to the woman's shirt, and some periwinkle blue for the part of the man's helmet that is in shadow. To be continued. . .