Oregon State: Jordan Poyer

The slightly corrected version from  the early  Sunday post.

Note:  I am trying the new feature for Google + that links my blog with google plus accounts. These links have a + sign in front of them.
+Oregon State University .  Congratulations to +Jordan Poyer .  Defensive All American.
 I decided to do this watercolor of Jordan Poyer of OSU as a gift for my sister and her husband who are huge OSU fans.  I was hoping to post this watercolor before the game yesterday, but I wasn't where I wanted to be with it.  Then I watched in disbelief as OSU lost the +Alamo Bowl  to that Texas team which shall remain unnamed. This is definitely a painting that I want to make into a slideshow  (my next project today).  At times I felt like I was painting a landscape on a pinhead.    It started to become tedious and I had to back away several times to try  to loosen it up.   I'm trying not to nitpick it to death.  It will never be perfect, I just want to be able to look at it (hopefully years from now) and not regret fixing something. It took me the most part of two days to get it to this point.
My impatience almost hurt me, because I started out with NO Orange on my palette.  I had to mix the Orange about 300 times ( felt like it) as I went along and as you can see, this is an Orange dominated painting.
There were times where I couldn't find my little mixtures of blue for the subtle shadows. My palette started to look like a color hoarder's, with about 14 little puddles of paint mixtures hanging around the main colors
The challenge of getting a painting like this to look loose enough without being sloppy is considerable, because practically everything has to be in proper proportion.  I was working in an 11" X 15"  inch window.  I found out that the brushes I have are not small enough for this, and I was alternating between a stiff #1 (A Grumbacher that I've had for over 20years), and 2 way-too-soft liners.   That tiny Grumbacher saved me, because I had to remove paint in tiny spots several times, and nothing else I have will do that.

This is the slideshow I made to track my progress on this painting.  The software didn't allow me to comment on each slide.  Something I need to do to track my steps.  You will notice about halfway thru I had to wipe out the face and completely overhaul the helmet angle. The funny thing is, that was a huge mistake on the most focal part of the painting.  I remember not having a clear look at the detail of the face.  I had to go back and magnify the face to get a better idea what I needed to do.