Today I began by deepening and desaturating the background color. The colored egg green was too immature for this sophisticated portrait but i use a color for the under layer that will influence the final layer. This must be applied sometimes in an inconvenient timing but it needs to dry before the hair around the outer edge. Now i scrubbed in a transparent but still rich hue of flesh, layering more color in the deeper areas of flesh and less heavily in the lighter areas. Of course, this is buffed to a sheen before carefully painting in a mixture of titanium white, flake white and naples yellow. In this image, i have smoothed and then buffed the areas as I go, to maintain a level of control. Keep in mind, what we achieve in these early layers is not the finished product. The supple skin will be built as we go. Try to make sure that what you accomplish in a layer is correct to the best degree although not finished. Each layer after will add more correctness and more dimension. I will try to post another image when I finish today’s work. Diana