30 faces - alex(in progress)

This is my effort for today.
Despite still having Willik at home with the chicken pox, and I had a big headache all day.
So, I painted this on a new canvas linen pad. I like the color of the linen, though I think I'd like it best if it was a stretched canvas.
I'm using a limited palette of 4 colors only, and I like it so far.
There was no underdrawing, just straight painting. It's very liberating. I still need to do about an hour's worth to call it done, but I'm not looing for a peice with every detail. I want to keep this loose, quality about it, somewhat abstracted, and treated as big shapes of the different planes of the face. it's a new way of painting for me, and it's a great learning process.
I also stretched my first canvas this morning. That made me feel like a "real" artist. Believe it or not, I've never stretched canvas before. I've stretched watercolor paper before, and that's super cool, and the concept is the same, but stretching canvas requires some heavy duty manual labor. You really have to pull the canvas tight, and it's difficult to do with your hands only. I used some of my husband's tools to get the job done. To staple the canvas to the bars, I used my own, recently purchased, heavy duty stapler. It worked great, but you really have to put some force into it. And now I know why one really needs canvas pliers. They are probably easier to use than regular flat little pliers found in a "normal" tool box. But all in all, I think the stretch on my canvas is pretty tight, and I need to gesso it, before I paint on it.