A baby portrait step by step - Sweet Lily

This is my latest commission, I already had made a portrait for Anne-Marie when she had her first child, now a baby girl arrived, and she kindly asked me to  make a portrait for little Lily.
So here I am, showing you the step by step process. The painting is made on half a sheet of Arches 300grs and used mainly Schminke transparent watercolors.

So here we go....

Step 1

These are the colors I chose for the background, W&N Antwerp blue and Schminke purple magenta.
Plan ahead and have all your stuff ready, prepare your colors in bigger quantities than you think you will need. It is a drama if in the middle of the painting you run out of color and have to mix more.....

The small brush with the opened up point is a very old brush I used 30+ years ago to paint on porcelain.
NEVER throw away old worn out brushes, they may be very useful for particular effects, I use this one especially for hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, it's just perfect!

So here is the first glaze on the background, wet on wet, I don't want it to be uniform, it would be boring, and in the ref. photo the baby is laying on a cotton towel, maybe mommy just changed her diaper, that's why she's smiling.......
I masked some hair on the front, the highlight on her right eye and on the tip of her nose. the paper is mounted on a gator board with masking tape that will also provide a nice edge to the painting.

Here is the second glaze on the background, this is a baby portrait, so color must be built up very slowly, no harsh changes of colors, I did some splattering when still wet.
I did the underpainting of the shirt using a cool yellow (aureolin) and a warm one ( indian yellow).

I used the same yellows to do the baby face underpainting, wet on wet (you may see the paper is still buckling in the photo).
To me, making the underpainting in (very diluted) yellows helps to give life to the colors that will be layered later.
Aureolin for the part of the face in light, and indian for the shadow areas.

I began working on the shirt, wet on wet. The sirt reflected here and there the skin colors, this is why I put a pinkish color on a white shirt.
And to me white is never "white"......

With the second glaze on her face, I began to give a "tridimensional" look, to shape it

The first layer of skintone: this will be used in all the following steps, varying the quantities of this or that color. Keep in mind that this is a baby with pale skin, so no harsh colors.
Anyways the colors I used here are: purple magenta, ultramarine finest and translucent orange, all by Schmincke.
I also mixed up some alizarin crimson and phtalo green (not blue, it was a typo)  to get a grayish color and painted the whole eyes with it.
At this stage poor Lily looks like a baby alien, but it will come together....

One more layer on the backgound, and some more working on the face.

More work on the face and the eyes where I used some toned down UMB for the pupils amd irises.

Still working on the face.....began painting the nostrils, which cannot be too dark, and on the lips, which are very challenging because they must not end up like she's wearing a lipstick, but they are naturally very pinkish

Slowly defining the details and the shadows........

Glaze over glaze, it is coming together. This is the slow part, as the paper must be bone-dry before applying the next glaze, and I don't use a hairdryer as I don't want to move the color on the paper....working more on the eyes, where I added some W&N blue green shade and indigo.

.....slow but steady progress.....

Been working more on the fine hair, lips eyes and "wrinkles".
Added a very diluted ruby red wash to her cheeks and tip of the nose.
Working very carefully on the lips.....

Nearly there...... :)
I removed the masking fluid and worked some more on the eye creases and the lips.
I also added some W&N blue green shade to the background to the left of her face

Done!!!!!
I'm very happy with the result, now for the part I like the most.....

.....removing the masking tape from the painting! :D

So here she is, Lily in all her beauty!!!

Hope you enjoyed this step by step and found it useful, pls let me know!!!