I have named this painting Eternal Beauty simply because the subject has been, is and always will be to man. A woman is the temple of life. In my mind all women are temples of life and all men are the guardians and protectors, at least we should be. Any painting that is exploitive, demeaning, abusive, or demonstrative of pain is not acceptable to me no matter the reasons. So, in my own way I am protesting those paintings that I am seeing in the world of art intended to shock the viewer. My personal artistic goal is to produce objects of art that enhances our human existence by giving us a pleasant moment of enjoyment.

OK, with all that said, I started the drawing phase of this painting on November 2nd. I have been mentally working on this one for a couple of months now. I chose to add a pastel underpainting step to the painting process development because I am very unsure about which way I want to go with the background. I have an idea about making the background dark like the old masters in the portraits and still life paintings, but I want to fade it to lighter wood brown tones at the bottom. I also can't make up my mind yet what color or colors I should make the fabric so I decided to do the testing in pastels so I could actually see it.

I wanted the fabric to accent the form, not the other way around. I also don't want to wrinkle or present multiple folds in the fabric because I feel it would take the painting in the direction of neo-classical. I don't want that either. I want a more crisp, clean and modern look to the painting. When finished I hope to achieve a blend of sorts between a well painted almost classical nude placed into an ethereal earth colored field with a small blanket or towel she could take with her if she wanted to step out of the painting.

As I closed in on the finish and discovering how luminescent the human body is I am beginning to suspect that the unspoken understanding among artists and some critics that an artist really isn't a true artist until the artist does some nude paintings. I always considered that it was because an artist needed to have an understanding of anatomy and facial features. I am beginning to see that I was right only on the rudimentary level. The major element or issue is the ability to reflect adjacent colors into the skin in such a fashion as to make it look natural, enhancing and beautiful without anyone noticing that any consideration was given to the need for creating this color exchange of the background and adjacent objects within the luminosity quality of the skin so as to not make it look as an applied shadow.

While there were many more painting and thinking issues, these are the most relevant in the process of producing this painting.