I’ve painted a large number of morning glory flowers and leaves on the right side of the painting, and repainted the yellow dress, which concludes the base coat work for the painting. I like the foliage and flowers, having taken care to position the vines so that the Empress’ extended feet come forward over the leaves, resolving the compositional problem of the meeting of the corner of the wall with the heel. Now that the foot as over leaves, not a hard edged point the foot feels more clearly in front of the wall. Doing this reminds me of the many days of work I put into the landscape of The Traveler painting, which took a couple of weeks to complete.
I finally got to repainting the yellow dress, following a pleasant hour on Google images researching pictures of beautiful models wearing haute couture to see how layered fabrics fall. I’m going for a lacey layer over a simple base layer of yellow drapery, with a swath of fabric tied around her waist. The hemline is slightly altered to allow for deeper folds. I’ve also added the beginning of a lace trim to the Empress’ dress, which is working nicely and will benefit from a little more definition.
