Artist's Statement:

This piece was originally another piece so the entire canvas was blue. On top of that, I would start painting directly from the tube and would take one color of paint and apply it with strokes onto the painting wherever I could see a hind of the color in the face. I wouldn't blend and would only layer. Because the background was originally blue, some parts were too dark so I had to use light paints to make it brighter. This piece was fun to make. I was breaking the boundaries of the "rules" of art. Typically, you shouldn't paint straight from the tube, but you should blend it first. For this piece though, I let the eyes do the blending. I also used black as shading on the face even though you shouldn't in normal painting. The final "rule" I broke was more of a style thing. I usually paint from details outwards so I would paint the centers of the face like the eyes first. For this piece, I painted the shadows first and big blocks of color before moving on to details.