Colour swatches and tests for Year's Dawn

It's such a simple idea but it really does save so much time. Basically I painted each colour I own put the name on the back and numbered them, they're easy to loose.

So the reason for doing this: I always test out different colour schemes before starting to paint. Which until now meant I had to paint down the colours together over and over if I wanted to make a slight change to the colour scheme. It actually takes quite a lot of time in the end.

This way I just quickly lay them down next to each other. Then I can just write down the colour names for reference and try out new ones quickly.

It's so simple but I thought I'd share, It'll save me a lot of time.

Blodeuwedd Finished

The finished painting of Blodeuwedd. To be honest I'm not quite sure what I think of this one.

On the technical side yeh I'm mostly happy with her, one of her arms is a bit funny but other than that technically I did well enough. Her face is looking good and the whole leaf/ hair printing random-ness in the background turned out really well, I'm really happy with how it merges with the white of the background. It's a useful technique and I'll definitely use it again.

Year's Dawn Idea and Sketches

I found the inspiration for this one really hard. I nearly always just have an idea pop into my head, refine it a bit and then paint it. I spend a lot of time thinking about the composition and the colours but not actually the concept, just going with what ever thing of interest shows up.

It's been a long long time since I've drawn without an idea before hand.

For this one I knew I wanted to do something winter themed without it being too Christmas-y and with out it being too heavy in the Pagan symbolism either. Something that could act as a Christmas/Yule/Solstice card without only being limited to that.

Blodeuwedd WIP

Blodeuwedd was actually a strange painting for me, both in art style and in how I worked on it. I'll mostly near complete one area before moving onto another. For Blodeuwedd I slowly built up multiple areas at once.

There's some good in doing it like this: Firstly it means one area can dry whilst I work on another, useful for such a large painting. I get an idea of how the overall colour scheme sits quicker and can adjust things in the early stages. Also I am less likely to overwork areas that don't need it.

However.....having your entire painting spending most of the time looking bad can be pretty disheartening. I was already pushing how interested I was in painting her due to doing so many tests for her before hand, adding in the extra time of waiting for her to look good didn't help.

I think in the end I'd probably be best of mixing the two methods, get the important bits like the face near complete and then I can start working on multiple areas at once.

Also working on multiple areas means it's harder to talk about my progress with each picture, you'll probably not notice the slight colour shifts things go through and it's really not worth mentioning on it's own.

Masking out the embroidery on her dress. For the bottom of it I used purple lake, shadow and payne's grey, with a lot of granulation fluid. Her original dress design was very princess-y and I wanted to stain it up a bit.

At this point her skin looks really weird, very much a case of it needing context to sit well though I do tone down the colour later. I think it'll take a while for me to decide if I want to do my painting's skin first because it's important and easy to mess up a face or closer to the end so I can compare it to it's surroundings. Hair first then skin?