Drapery studies

The title says it all...

Completed painting

Here is the final version of the painting in my last post:

Painting progress & process

In my last post,  I included a sketch which I'd done from the model & was in the process of gridding out and transferring to the larger canvas.  In the past, I've developed full size drawings on toned paper for transfer to the canvas as well as "freehand" drawings from smaller oil sketches or drawings.  In the latter process, the transfer can be slow & laborious,  especially on a large painting, as you have to continually step back to see your work. This is particularly important during the initial blocking in of the drawing. For larger pieces like the ones I've been doing,  I've found that putting a lot of work into this drawing stage makes the painting come together much more easily (and quickly).  The issues of tone and color are much easier to tackle if several studies have been done beforehand,  and the drawing has been worked out to the greatest extent possible during the beginning stages, especially concerning the exact placement of shapes within the picture plane.  With this latest painting,  I've tried to follow more closely some of the methods (as I understand them) of William-Adolphe Bouguereau,with an emphasis on his process more than anything else.  Once my drawing was transferred via a grid

I began the frottie stage in which the basic pattern of dark shapes is laid in.

 Once this stage was completed, I started on the ebauche, in which I worked color into the frottie.  The colors, in this case, were actually more intense than I intended them to be in the final painting.

The last stage is the fini, the stage of final completion.  This is a bare bones description of the process I used but it shows all of the essential steps as far as they were used with this particular piece.  I will post a better picture of the final painting some time this week.