Wonder what kind of reaction I’d get if I went in tomorrow, scribbled this, and ran out the door to spend a leisurely week getting fat(ter) on gelato.

A quick sketch I made while sitting in Boboli Garden. It’s a sculpture/fountain in the midst of many plants and trees.

Started up with the paint today; just a re-do of the sketch with very diluted raw umber, then a background color. Monday we’ll start in with “dead coloring,” or thick layers of flat color.

Here’s a look at how the drawing was transferred. First, I traced the sketch with red pencil. Then I loosely traced it on the opposite side with charcoal. Finally, I laid the charcoal on the canvas itself and traced with a pencil to transfer the charcoal. Whew!

After another tedious day, I’m almost to the point where I can transfer the image to my canvas. The drawing is all light and shadows–no shades of grey–because that’s all that will be transferred, via tracing paper.

Well, here’s my first day sketching the model, using the tedious process I described previously. And believe me, it took till the end of the day to come up with anything remotely resembling her!

I feel I should mention that this is a horrible photo of her; she’s actually very pretty and young, and tired after posing for 6 hours!

And I have no idea how to paint curly hair. I guess the teacher will help me out.