Mouth of David Cast Study - Oil Grisaille

Oil Grisaille on Canvas - 6x6"

This is a little study I did of the a Mouth of David cast, well actual a photo I found online of the cast as I do not have the actual cast. I was planning on buying the set of casts but of course they have to be shipped so keep putting it off and luckily in the meantime  found a really nice bust locally to work from for a fraction of the price. So expect to see many more cast studies from me in the near future :)

Raw Umber, Ivory Black and Titanium White

After transferring the outline sketch to my canvas I mixed a string of gray scale values using Raw Umber, Ivory Black and varying amounts of Titanium white to get a range of 7 values.  My value 1 is straight titanium white and my value 7 is a 2:1 mix of Ivory Black and Raw Umber.  I really enjoyed this exercise and using a simple subject really allowed me to focus on modelling the form without getting caught up in the details. 

The photo of the finished study looks much whiter than in real life.  I will have to wait for a sunny day and re take a bunch of my photos outside as I just can't seem to get decent shots inside.  Oh well, no sun means I don't have to think about yard work and can keep painting, bring on the rain :)