Well, I somehow neglected to post after my last visit to the NGA to work on this painting, which was on October 31. November went by, and yesterday I finally made it back to wrap it up. Here is my copy in its final form. Not perfect by any means, but as far as I want to go.
I mainly worked on the hand that is holding the cigarette, clarifying the darks and lights and adjusting the colors. A foreshortened hand is one of the hardest things to draw correctly, so I concentrated on getting the shapes right, trying to see the thing abstractly. I'm reasonably happy with it - it doesn't look as much like a flipper as it did earlier!
I also worked on the dress, adding the detail in the cuff and working on the lacy stuff in the front. I'm aware that my colors are darker than Manet's, but I didn't want to go back in and adjust everything. I tried to get the colors in the right ballpark. So much "pink"! The color of the dress and the color of her skin are so close, but slightly different. The dress is a cooler pink, so I used a cooler red to mix it - quinacridone red, and I used cadmium red in the skin. But wait, the skin also seems yellower, so there's some of that. At this point, I kind of gave up and acknowledged that it was as close as I had the energy to get.
Quite a few museum visitors came over to tell me how good my copy was, so I guess it's not too glaringly different. Of course I see where it falls short, but it's good enough. My main interest was in her pose, and I feel that I was able to capture her weariness after a long day's work. This is how I feel after a day at the National Gallery!
I turned in my permit for this painting, but I haven't selected what I'll do next. I may take some time off during the month of January, but will let you know when I am back at it! Thank you for reading.
As always, click the images for a larger view.
You can see my earlier copies by scrolling down the column on the right.
