B+W Study 10-29

Huh. I just realized now (7.05 AM) that this is the very first portrait study I've done since college. 

Notes: After I scratched together a mask and blurred it with an eraser on 50% opacity, I avoided concrete details and focused first on matching the patches of occlusion, absolute darkness, in the Lauren Bacal reference; then I moved on to figuring out the general shape of the references, the silhouette; then I tried to soft-brush the natural indentations, the valleys and peaks of the facial plane; and all the while I kept slavishly forcing myself to not deviate from the reference; mentally slapping myself on the wrist, 'No! That's not the shape that shadow makes. Paint what's there not what you "feel" it looks like!' Trusting the shadows to do the heavy lifting isn't easy, but, uh, it's always surprising when the process pans out. 

 This took about five hours. 

P.S. Marc Brunet's basic brush set. Invest, y'all.