Everyone knows that when you paint in stages many paintings go thru an ugly stage, well this is it for this painting. I first put on a layer of cobalt blue then in the warm areas I put in Naples yellow, some light red in other areas. then I let this dry I made a mixture of sap green and raw umber, this looks like an olive green, I painted this over the blue in the darkest areas. This is a compliment to the blue and will slightly grey the cool blue down.
after this dried I appied a wash of naples yellow over everything except the white side of the face, I haven’t decided if I want that area warm or not.
after the green mixture I applied a light wash of light red again. so right now I’m building the colors so there will be depth to the skin.

If you look back to the first picture you can see I had to paint the arms over a pretty dark blue area which was part of the background. This is why there is so much contrast to the lower arms. They really don’t look like they belong… I will have to make some adjustments. If the adjustments don’t work, I’ll have to come up with some other ideas.