Rachel, 18" x 16", oil on linen

Rachel volunteered to pose for the club in the place of a member who couldn't pose as scheduled.

To paint Rachel, I chose a linen that had a medium-rough texture because I wanted to paint her with less smoothing of the painting surface. I wanted to leave brush strokes alone as they were laid with minimum manipulation on the canvas surface to give more spontaneous and expressive quality.

From the beginning of the pose I noticed Rachel would slowly tilt her head to the left. I thought that slight angle would give a subtle but interesting expression. Instead of asking her to straighten her head after each break, I just let her slowly settle her head back to her comfortable position and tried to capture the expression.

At some point during painting, it occurred to me that the way we operate with our "models" is sort of like a Ponzi scheme; as we get more new participants and the guest models, those of us who have been participating from the beginning of the club don't have to pose anymore but just keep on painting.