Self-Portrait with Trees—Skin Tone

Sunday, July 25. I am here.

I am here! The two days of plumbing under the kitchen sink last weekend that kept me away is accomplished and very well and worth it. Perhaps I won’t need to see to it every year, and maybe not ever again with the AAV valve in place now.  
 
I am here now, as usual terribly exhausted, living the life of three women, working very hard to get my graphics work done, and now the GAB marketing class, and being here, just barely, in the studio today after yesterday spent mostly on homework.
 
I’ve been reading till now on this Sunday that I am claiming for myself, resting, part of me longing to be reading still. But I know I'll miss doing this next step, starting to resolve the skin tone.
 
I think I’ll first aim for the right overall color. Once I get that, I'll apply it with a 2-inch house painting brush. That will help. Then I’ll stand back, take a look, and proceed to go back in for shading by looking in my hand mirror. It will be backwards from what the shading is in the blown-up photo and in my features because the light in my studio is hitting my face from the other side. But the viewer is just going to have to deal! It'll be good enough! Fantastic words that have taken me 68 years to be able to say. The trees are the most important part of this piece.
  
One step at a time. First make my tea. This helps with the shift from THAT world to THIS—always difficult for me.
 
OK, then. Get up. Get going.

After

Well. It’s the next step. I’m not DISsatisfied. Still needs work. The skin looks dark, but looking at My Higher Self piece, it's not so different.

Doesn't look like me at all. Might never. Does it matter? I don't know. I think it's mostly the feeling that I want, of what will be this very large face peering through the trunks of my glorious trees.
 
Needs lightening in places. More highlights—stronger, LIGHTER highlights—where the light hits my face. Like the end of the nose. I like the lightness there.
 
Also needs more prominent wrinkles at my laugh lines and around my mouth and between my eyebrows.
 
Need to paint in my eyebrows—draw them with a marker?

The shape of the face is weird. Need to define it more. Perhaps with the fabric of the forest floor.

The skin tone is better than it was, all a mottled mess.
  
Good progress. I'm OK with this. It's a good next step.
 
This may be the hardest piece I've ever done.
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​Too tired to write anything really pithy.