Richard Olsen in His Studio II (work in progress, 4)

Step 4

I'm using glazes of the pigment cinabrese to model the face. It's a pale, warm red earth color that's very good for rendering flesh tones. With multiple applications, I go over the entire face and hair with the color -- straight pigment but quite dilute -- while allowing the verdaccio underpainting to remain mostly untouched in the darkest shadows such as the creases in the face and other features. For the lighter passages, I added a small amount of titanium white to the cinabrese glaze. I'm using that slightly more opaque (and lighter value) red with a dry brush and pointed stroke to follow the cross contours of the face and further bring the head into relief. I want to draw everything into resolution slowly, though, and prolong a diaphanous color treatment so that later, more direct paint will indicate mass and give the impression of spatial projection. In a manner similar to the painting on the head, I've started to model the brown lab coat with applications of greenish raw umber and white.