A Light In The Dark

Well...that's it done, that's my painting finished. :)

There's things I like about it and things I wasn't able to fix but I learned a lot from doing it...including don't spend so much time on one painting you get bored. 

I added some more gold to the crown and green beads in different arias of her dress, I couldn't find another colour that worked, and then mostly just pottered around playing with tiny details.

Since I've been working on this for so long the gum tape holding it down was a nightmare to remove and tore up the paper underneath pretty badly but at least that will all be hidden when I frame it, but it took a few hours to get off.

Fixed her skin, background, gold and little details

So for the most part I've fixed her skin...it's still not right but I can't place why it's not or how to fix it. I guess this will do for now. I don't know I've just been staring at this painting for too long but I'm growing dissatisfied with it, most of the problems I'm managing to partly fix but not completely, I feel like I can't quite see what's wrong. Still, it's nearly done, it didn’t stick to what I imagined but I suppose these things rarely do.

I darkened down the out trees in the background, trying to reinforce that the light source is the lamp, I was somewhat reluctant to add more paint to the background but the trees still had a weird pattern to them from the masking fluid and I could only really smooth that out with more paint. It would have been nice to keep the lightness they had before in some arias. 

The shawl's been lightened and I'm not sure if it's better, it definitely looks worse now in the photo but that's mostly because the gold when not reflecting is the same darkness as the shawl, in sunlight it looks better. I'm still not sure if I've made it better or not...at least it's not worse, the shawl was just too dark before but now it feels too unsaturated. 

Details and hair

First of all I was just finishing off darkening the shadows on her sleeve and shawl.
Shadows on the brass powder is pretty slow, you have to put down a first thin layer just to give it some grip on the brass and then slowly work up, it's as easy to accidentally take the paint off when you add more layers on of it, you also can only really blend out sharp lines with a ever so slightly damp brush, and again it's easy to move too much paint.

Then I added in the orange, the quinacridone sienna, to the details on the sleeves, neck and train edge even if I don't know yet what colours the gems will be on them.

Shawl and sleeves

To be honest I was expecting to progress far more today than I did, but it takes time to put the layers of paint on the brass mix and smooth out and it's starting to get dark early now....I predict I'll really hate the small levels of daylight over this winter.

So the shawl is permanent magenta with indigo in the shadows, I'm still working on adding the shadows over the brass.
Working with the brass can be visually annoying, from some angles it's really cold and makes the whole painting look worse, but if I line it just right it can be really warm and shine.
The sleeve is alizarin crimson with permanent magenta shadows, also added a bit more alizarin to the inner sleeve.

Tiny bit more work

Annnnnd that's the end of my buffer. It doesn't even have much progress done since the last picture.

So the obvious thing is I took off the masking fluid on her shawl, you can see the pattern underneath much clearer now. Gonna fill in the white with permanent magenta when I get back to the flat.
The less obvious thing here is that I went over the pattern (the birds, flowers and gold) on her train adding shadows to it, just to make it sit in a little more.

Tonight we've got a Halloween/Bonfire night party and I always get roped into doing the face paints....I guess tomorrow I'll post up any good face paints and my own costume?

Train detail and gems

Sorry for the bad photo, it was taken at night and my flat doesn't have a good light.

So...starting with the red train aria, I added in the birds and the rest of the flowers in with a mix going from naples yellow to permanent magenta, I'll need to add more to them since they don't quite stand out enough.
Then I added in the green gems with the picture below as a rough guide, starting off with masking the aria on the gems I wanted to remain white and then doing a transition from sap green to winsor green to indigo....as soon as these were added I was really happy with how it all looked.
Then I added in the brass powder/golden calligraphy ink mix with a pen nib, it took ages and I had to do a few layers since it wasn't coming out the pen nib enough...turns out it would have if I pressed harder, wish I knew that at the start.

Masking the back of the dress

 I went over all the pattern on the back of her skirt with masking fluid, it took a pretty long time but at least I'm nearly done drawing over that pattern...I've probably drawing over it 4 or 5 times now, never mind all the times to test colours, from tracing it back and forth But it's nearly done and then I can ignore it.
I used alizarin crimson with some permanent magenta in the shadowed arias for most of it. The flower petals are permanent magenta again this time with a bit of indigo in the shadows. I also used quinacridone sienna (I hate how long that word is in comparison to how many time's I've had to write it in a tiny space, why can't paints have shorter names?) for the flower centers on the front.

Final drawing

The final drawing on the stretched watercolour paper before I start painting on top. I'm pretty happy with this drawing and there was something very satisfying about having it traced on with crisp lines onto tight perfectly flat stretched paper. Everything felt precise and right....well...apart from that I traced her too far left on the paper and had to shorten the train of her dress to fit it all on....apart from that.

I have to say I really hate fish eye on my camera lenses....I get it for normal photos but it's so annoying when trying to take photos of rectangular pits of paper and then having their straight edges warp. yes I can just stand further back and use my zoom but then I loose some quality and things blur...need to get my tripod whilst I'm at my mums.

I'll edit the pictures in about a week and a half's time but for now you'll just have to survive with the non photoshoped version of things... my mum's laptop only has paint and I don't have access to anything else at hers.

Patterns

Two of the patterns were easy to make and didn't require much contorting to fit in with the way the fabric folded... And then there was this last one. I tried drawing it out, it looked terrible, I could barely get the detail in it clear let alone wrap it around her dress. Since the different hexagonal panels lined up strangely the leaves had to change every time to not overlap with a flower or bird.

This ended up being my solution, to trace it onto my monitor and make it tillable digitally.... It took longer than I'd like to admit but I'm happy with the result and I'll be able to use it again some time.

Original sketch

The original idea for this painting is pretty old... maybe about two years? So this is pretty different from at the start, far more Wulfing than Klimt. I probably should have sketched the original idea down at some point but to be honest I'm happy enough with this idea as well. At least it came out in some form. 

Awhile a go I posted this up on level up (a Facebook art group, pretty good) to get critique on it and I've fixed up the few things that was pointed out there, mostly around the bustle.

I'll admit I've been posting these in a bit of a strange order, I suppose after inspiration and references this should have come next. I'm way ahead of this stage, currently in the middle of painting the final painting, but I didn't want to just start posting about this painting/project half way through..... also I won't be able to work on it for the next ten days so I suppose it's good to have a bit of a buffer. 

I wonder what I'll find to post about when I'm not in the middle of a project.

References: Russian ball gowns & patterns