Demo Lincoln

I wanted to show you how I developed the Lincoln portrait.

I used a gessoed board, that was already prepared for a portrait ( skin-colored).
At first I added some guidelines to the photography in order to keep the proportions right (in the end the face got a bid too long though), then I painted the dark parts, that are mainly the area around his eyes and his beard and later on his dark suit ( I assumed it must have been black and his bow tie gray). Then I added some color that I had in my mind would go well with his face. This step was the most difficult part of this challenge, because you had to somehow invent the colors. After I had an idea of the colors I added some lights to the nose, eyes and chemise. At the end I elaborated some important parts like again his eyes, his cheeks, mouth and finally I densified the background and his suit. Done :-)

Thank you Mary Maxam, Horst, Diane, Carlene, Linda, Mary Rochelle Burnham, Karen, Madeleine Deborah, Pattie and Maria for your nice comments!!!