I am showing the sequence of stages that this painting took as it developed. After drawing the main layout from a photo, I masked some highlights in the hair and the main flower.
I applied a very watery golden wash to the entire paper and let it dry. Then I added some more masking to save some of the yellow background color in her hair.
I began to lay in the main skin tones.
The second photo shows laying in ore mid tones for the dress, hair and flowers.
I was able to remove the masking after this stage as I was finished with large areas and ready to focus on only the details.
Finally I added the necessary darks to her hair, flowers and foliage and some shadows.
