In the studio I’ve worked on the flesh of the hanged man a little more, adding whites into the highlights and blue into the shadows and the hair. I’ve scraped plenty of Cadmium Red into the lower arm, reasoning that because he’s hanging upside down his blood would have descended to the lowest parts of [...]
After a few days of humming and hahing I’ve committed to editing the Traveler and Magician paintings from their earlier square composition. Now rectangles, the compositions look much better balanced, with the focus of attention moving down to the sun and the hand and face of the Traveler, while in the Magician the relationship of [...]
Donna Granata visited the studio yesterday to shoot the portrait photos for the Focus on the Masters archive that I mentioned a couple of days ago. I enjoyed her company very much, she’s great fun to chat with. I’m looking forward to seeing what the pictures look like; she’s going to show the portrait in [...]
The quest for foliage continues, and I’ve been adding dark shadows into the foliage on the right side of the painting, building substance and getting further away from the very decorative leaves that were there before. In the photo you can see where the new edge of the painting is (regular visitors will remember I [...]
Because the grass will stand in front of the Empress’ legs I’ve decided to paint the skin now, then work on the grass over the top of it. This will be a lot better than trying to paint flesh around all the fiddly stems and leaves once the grass is in. It was such a [...]
Freedom from the bondage of these vines is within reach. Although I didn’t get as far along as I would have liked, I’ve made good progress with the morning glory, with a single day’s work ahead before this layer is complete. I still need to fix up some of the flowers and a few of [...]
It’s worrying, changing a hand in a painting, but the shaman really needed a new left hand (her left, our right) so I asked my student Ashley to model for me and shot new reference pictures for it, then re-rendered the base coat in white, then re-worked the new version, and will soon re-do the [...]
The morning glory has spread to cover much of the calf of the Emperor’s right leg, but I want to show more of it reaching up to pass his left foot, perhaps even stretching out tendrils toward his abdomen and increasing the feeling that he is being overwhelmed by the creeping vines. Working on the [...]
The Emperor is beginning to get increasingly convincing now that his shorts are becoming more substantial, although I’d like to add a second working of the Raw Umber to the painting I did today to make the value more appropriate for the next layer, which will introduce colour to the canvas. Meanwhile there’s a [...]
I covered a lot of canvas today by working fast and deliberately choosing to make broad compositional strokes rather than finessed detailed gestures. The chair is looking appropriately wobbly and now the composition is beginning to make sense. I like the rickety structure holding the chair together; later I’ll paint boy scout rope lashings to [...]
