Thoughts after the last update:
Why would I add costume design designs and ideas to this painting?  Is it just relenting to my own rational ideas -- letting go that needs to happen?  It’s a great painting.  I can do renderings another time.  Is it giving up?  Or is it giving in to the painting itself?  I’m beginning to think maybe I should stop.

Let it just be about the dress.  Just the dress.  A dress is about the person in it.  What is a dress?  It’s a choice.  Clothing is a choice about how we want to be in the world, about how we want to feel—how we must protect ourselves or reveal ourselves or change ourselves to attract or repel another.  This is costume design/history 101. Perhaps humans avoid evolving by dressing instead of physically adapting to our environment.  Where animals evolve via survival of the fittest, one way we as humans adapt to our environment is by wrapping animal skins or vegetable weavings around us. 

In a dramatic sense as a costume designer I was one of the story tellers--I would move a story along or reveal something about a person using the clothing choices.  I was the one making the choices.  OK, so sometimes the actors had a say as well. 

So, what is this particular dress saying about this specific person?  Nothing yet.  She’s relaxed, she’s calm.  She’s thoughtful. 

It’s not fancy –it’s not done yet.  It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it has to get more specific.  I’m going to write a bio for this woman. 

This feels right and it’s constructive. The costume design idea seems right too, but maybe for another painting. 

The Red Dress. 

I am so tired. Had a headache today.  But I made progress on the painting.  I like the background very much.  I used Umbers and Ochre and flow release and matte medium. 

Then I collaged some pictures in b/w and will wash over them with ochre.  I had one successful transfer and one not so successful one due to impatience.  Painting her skin is a challenge with so much of it to do.  I thought using a large brush would do it, but she’s really flat.  It’s the way I handle light and shadow. Perhaps if I had put more dark shadows in the under painting that would have helped.  But I do like the blue green showing through her skin. 

Now the costume design part of the concept is coming through.  I will have to end up writing on the canvas.  I wonder what to use.  Perhaps I will try the pen that Jonathon Talbot suggested which I have never used. 

Theatre Name: Red House theatre
Play: It’s Not Baroque
Character:  Barbarina (maybe)

There will be more writing.  I think I will just write directly on the canvas.

It's really hot today, and since I'm dealing with some other personal stuff, I'm going to let her rest in her red dress.  Hmmm.  Without a mouth she can't speak to me.  I guess it will be really quiet for a little while.