The Perfumed Spot

Oil on wood, 12 x 12 inches (31 x 31 cm)

The light caught the spot behind her ear where a dab of perfume often goes.

Arriving at the right color for a certain spot in a painting is a matter of trial and error for me. You put a piece of color down and then say to yourself, "Hmmm, no, it needs more blue," or "It's a tad too light," so you mix a new color and try that. The first colors put down are not entirely obscured by the subsequent layers, rather they still express themselves so there is a cumulative process which ultimately gets you to the right color, or so you hope.

With this painting I took a slightly different approach, putting down the layers of color in separate small dabs instead of solid fields. The idea is to allow the final blending of the color to be done in a viewer's brain as, viewed at a distance, the separate dots merge and are perceived to be continuous color. This is a well known method called "optical blending."