Well, since I’m going to be up a while to see if I’m going to get more flooding, might as well post some images.
This is the Telephone Girl Project, a collective effort by the Yahoo Oil-Painters’ group. We’re all supposed to do our interpretation of the image below.
Let me say at the outset that portraits are not my strong suit, not by a long margin. So it’ll be an interesting exercise. She’s called the Telephone Girl because that was the name of the store where she worked. Apparently, since the photo was taken she’s moved on and the store is no more.
Aside from the fact that it’s a portrait, another potential problem I see is that she is close to being face-front in the image. If youv’e ever done a portrait, you know there is nothing harder than a full-front picture. All the shadows and tones that give the features depth are all gone, so that, for example, a nose is just another area on the face, rather than the creator of shadows and highlights. She may be at enough of an angle where this won’t be too problematic.
Anyway, onward. Here’s what I started with:
Wow, you must be thinking, you’re almost done! Yeah. Just got to add the details.
One of my occasional painting habits is that I like covering the entire canvas with an undercoating in one particular color. It takes away the hold that the blank canvas can have over me. So I’ve given this black and white project an undercolor:
Why red?
Well…why not red?
More to follow as it happens. And hey, it seems to have stopped raining…for the moment.
A Planet That Has No Sky 
I know why red. It draws the eye.
Yeah, I hope theres enough of an angle, because face on is a pain in the tuckus. Good luck.
I’ll be interested in seeing how the painting turns out. I love portraits(not that anybody particularly needs to know that:)