A not-too-slavish copy of Head of a Woman by Orazio Gentileschi. This copy is about a third the size of the original, and was painted with a limited palette of just ultramarine blue, transparent oxide red and titanium white. I first heard about transparent oxide red (PR101) from Terry Miura who uses it instead of umbers, and I think it’s becoming one of my favourite staple paints, not least because it mixes well with ultramarine to create a surprising range of flesh tones. The only downside is that it’s so tempting to leave the glowing orange when really I should be muting the colour down.

I haven’t done an overlay check of proportions with this one as that wasn’t really the exercise (though I did play around in Photoshop with a photo of the half-completed painting to identify an overly bulging eye). The challenge was to see if I could capture anything of that arresting and inquisitive gaze.