girl in acrylics

'Blue eyes', acrylics and pen, 8.5 by 12 ins., canford paper.

How dark to make shadow areas?  This is always a bit of a quandry for me when I paint in this style.  I could use impasto for highlights and opaque darks, but I prefer to paint in lots of thin transparent glazing layers.  I think the beauty is in the multiple layers of glazes.  And so getting the darks really dark takes a while.

I used my new Winsor & Newton colours for this painting to try them out.  They take longer to dry than my usual Daler System 3 acrylics but quicker than the various interactive acrylics.

I like the W&N acrylics because you can use them for both fast and slow methods so I will gradually shift over to these and add in some more exciting tube colours as I go along.