Finished! It was quite an ordeal but I'm glad I set the idea aside until I developed better painting skills, I could never had painted this picture decently one year ago.
I changed a bit some of the items since the sketch version I posted a long time ago, see the description on DeviantArt for a full explaination of how I reworked the traditional symbolism:
http://rangifer.deviantart.com/art/Fourier-Age-Avatar-WIP-292023186
One last WIP shot took some days before. The main figure was more prominent without the rosettes (fur spots), it gave the picture a simpler design but I prefer the final version with colorful rosettes since the cold colors of the fur already contrasts a lot with the scenery colors. I painted the rosettes in yellow/orange and violet to give them a slightly iridescent look.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Panic signs
I just learned that the looks of oil paint varies a lot more than I expected depending on the kind of surface, the kind thinner used to rinse brushes, and even the size of brushes and brush strokes. In spite of all coloring tests I still tend to panic about some details, especially in the early stages of painting when a color mix looks different from what I expected.
Here I panicked a bit while painting the first layer of green behind the throne because it looked much more opaque and saturated compared to the miniature test, and as a result the brushwork looks dull. Around the lamp the color looked OK and the brushwork is much more natural:
Here I panicked a bit while painting the first layer of green behind the throne because it looked much more opaque and saturated compared to the miniature test, and as a result the brushwork looks dull. Around the lamp the color looked OK and the brushwork is much more natural:
When using acrylics a mistake in the underpainting is a big deal, but luckily with oils it is much easier to blend further layers of paint with the first ones even after a few days. So there is no point in worrying about subtle nuances of color in the early stages.
This is a later stage where the green area is still too flat but the colors are beginning to fall into place. I haven't used any black: all the dark areas are a very dark violet which I'm also using to darken the other colors where needed. When painted thick this violet becomes almost black, but it remains translucent so it sends nice violet reflections when light hits the surface. Being complementary to the green and yellow of the throne's outline it should make for a more interesting color scheme in the end.