Collaboration with Stephanie Allison

Stephanie Allison and I have decided to do a fun little collaboration.  We each are going to paint half a canvas and then mail it to the other one to finish the other half.  I started on an 11x14 canvas panel and thought I would give you all a step by step look at how it evolves.  After I send it off to Stephanie she is going to do the same at her blog, so be sure to follow the whole progression over there.
I often post a few wips of my work over on my Facebook page, but rarely do I remember to take photos at every step.  Since this one was a small quick piece I tried to stop myself and take some photos.  I wanted to especially show you how much I often struggle to get the perfect skin tone and hair color on my girls.  Unfortunately with me, it is often just guesss work and not really an exact science.  So here we go:

The beginning sketch above.  With a quick wash of ultramarine blue below (after I sprayed it with a light layer of workable fixative).

When I first start adding skin tones they can look a mess for awhile.  Adding fixative over the canvas makes the first layers of paint not stick so well too.  I have to lay down a lot of thin layers early on and let them each dry.  At first they can look a mess for awhile, but I try my best to add the shadows and dark areas first.

Below I am adding in the darks of her hair.  I am trying to figure out where to go with her skin tone.  She is a little too pink and pasty at this point.

I think I want to go blonde, but it does not look good with her skin tone.

So I added some orangey tones to her skin and decided to go dark with the hair.  Had to add a mask too.

Getting close to done now.  Just got to add the peacock details.

And here is she is all done...well at least my side.  I kind of hogged a little more than half, I hope Stephanie doesn't get annoyed with me!