New painting progress on this Christmas eve

I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas Eve!

I had a beautiful, quiet afternoon doing one of the things I love best. Yep, painting. Here are my progress photos of this new Ray painting. This one is 24 x 12 inches, and I really like getting to paint him larger than life!

 Here’s the initial sketch, in black acrylic, and my finished underpainting, using only three colors (in addition to the black sketch): phthalo blue, magenta and permanent green, in various transparent combinations.

The blanket is blue and green layered together -- I started with phthalo blue, then a layer of the green, then another layer of the blue, to get it nice and deep. Ray and the chair are magenta and phthalo blue layered together, and the space under the chair is only blue. I love the water colory effect of this stage.

 In these photos, you can see the development of Ray’s face in oil paints. 

So far I’ve used Mars black, titanium white, bright violet, French ultramarine, 

phthalo blue, turquoise, Hooker’s green, yellow ochre, vermilion, 

Indian red, alizarin crimson and burnt umber. 

And a par - trih - idge in - a - pear -- *big breath* -- treeeeeeeeee!