The progression of Presence from start to finish

So here's your chance to play "What's different in each picture?"!  Over the course of the last month, I've been documenting the progress of this painting each time I've worked on it, sometimes as much as once an hour.  I thought it might be interesting to see the steps all in one place now that the piece is finished.  The changes in the last few steps are quite subtle and might not be easily discernible unless you look at the larger versions (or unless you're me and know what you changed!).  Towards the end, the background color seems to change several times.  In fact, I only changed it once.  The other shifts were due only to the changing light - most of the pictures were taken using daylight only.  The one that stands out as different was taken under artificial light - and I really dislike what happened under that light!

This piece was different than most of the paintings I do in that I began it with the yellow/orange underpainting.  I don't think I'll do it again.  It was too glaring a contrast to the color I was aiming for in the end and made it difficult to settle in on the right hue (color).  I think it was more distracting than not.  I don't know if it ultimately made a difference in the final picture or not.  Probably it caused me to apply more layers which led to greater subtleties and finesse - that would be a good thing in that case!  If you're my student and are looking at these images, please notice how huge a difference putting in the background color made!  For me, it suddenly set everything right and made all my other choices make sense.  It definitely shifted everything!  (I often bug my students to remember to put in their background early on in the process because everything might change once they do.  This is a good example of how that happens!)

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  It's good to have you here.