The little girl from Darfur is presenting me with all sorts of challenges. First off, half her face is in dark shadow, making her right side of the face really dark. So challenge number one is to come up with ways to make her skin look dark yet lively by introducing greens and reds into the shadow areas, by staying in similar dark values. Control is of essence otherwise this will look clownish! Moments such as these are when I wish I had a living model to work from rather than guessing around. Just noticed the nostril is way too light!
Challenge number two remains the head cloth. The color is slowly moving away from fuchsia, but it's still not quiet the color I am aiming for.
Challenge number three is the hand, funky foreshortening going on, but fun to work out. Still needs to get rounder.
I wanted to punch little areas of color in the cloth and I think it worked. To achieve this I grayed down the adjacent areas and then used Cad. Red straight out of the tube. There is a value difference of at least 2 to 3 values.
Looking at the image on the monitor the background is too light and will have to recede more. Might try putting everything in and then toning it down with a darker wash. I darkened the background in photoshop, and it looks like a darker background brings more attention to the girl. We'll see...
