Femme de feu XI - step I... A return with experimentation in mind!

It's finally time to get back to some serious painting. At first, I wanted to add another painting to my vortex series. Instead, I decided to experiment using the roller on a couple of female mixed martial arts fighters. This is a quick sketch on a 30 X 30 piece of raw cotton canvas...

..followed by a first color pass...

I will also go for a different color scheme than the usual red for the "Femme de feu" series. This scene is pretty harsh, so I hope that abstraction patterns with the roller will attenuate somewhat that character.

Note to self: "It suddenly dawned on me, I don't look at the subject matter any more, concentrating instead on rendering the different values in front of my eyes. This is real progress... and it took me 40 years to get there!"