Every year there is a couple's retreat at St. Emma's Benedictine Monastery. The good sisters who run the place are beautiful and caring and make an interesting subject to paint.
This is a fairly large canvas, 3'x4'. I toned the canvas with a dilute mixture of Viridian green and Transparent red oxide, which creates a range of raw umber colors.
Next I started with the far right face. I always block in the area with a thin glaze of Terra Rosa, wipe out the highlights of the nose and forehead, then with stronger terra rosa I mark the inside corner of each eye. From there I rough in the eyes and start lifting off more highlights. It's much like sculpture because you are modeling a form.
The red and green tones on the faces are part of the underpainting, to influence the skin tone I will apply later.
The black Habits of the sisters were painted on with a knife. The designs in each one are scraffitoed into the thick paint (each design is based on a Christian symbol that I felt said something about that person.) My intention is to paint the faces very luminously, but the Habits will be flat and graphic. Wheat fields will develop in the background.
