I relined the blue drawing of the figures with graphite, having discovered that the pigment was not particularly strong once I started work with the base coat.
The completed figures have been sealed under a wiped out layer of Iron Oxide Red, which means that soon I’ll be able to do some en grisaille work to establish them with paint. I’ve ragged the area around the girls, leaving the surface with quite a bit of texture so that when I get into the cherry blossom there’s already some variation between light and dark petals.
Alma-Tadema did a couple of extraordinary paintings that featured thousands of petals, notably The Roses of Heliogabalus but they’re a little too disorganized for my liking; I think I’m going to be more specific.
