Stlukesguild

I spent the day today... the hottest day of the year to date... turning the fan off and on as I added more gold leaf. The heat was so unbearable I couldn't really think straight... which unfortunately shows . I first came to the painting thinking the young girl's dress was too light in value and did not contrast enough with the background... thus I painted it darker. This was too "heavy" in appearance and so I decided to add a pattern in gold leaf. Here I've roughly applied the leaf to the adhesive:





This looked like crap... the dress was still too dark... but now with added visual jangling of all that patterning which was simply too much. I decided to tone down the background of the dress so that it would be closer in value to the leaf causing the dress to read more as a single solid shape... with the patterns only recognized after the fact.





In theory it should work... but I certainly don't like the results. The dress is now again far too light and gets lost against the background (wall and floor). A whole day in the studio down the toilet . Driving home I hit upon a solution. I need to focus upon the girl (the main subject) and I need to harmonize with the red carpet. The obvious solution is to employ red in the dress. Perhaps a simple red dress that is slightly modeled (suggesting 3-D form) with patterns only in the trim. Hmmm...:smug: This will require a good deal of sanding and at least 3 coats of under-painting primer. Back to the art supply store tomorrow.
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Well... I returned to the studio with the notion of making the dress red. I began by sanding down the gold leaf. Before I had completely sanded it down I found that I liked the way it looked:



I then began to use a brownish red for the dress... painting around the now highly "weathered" gold leaf:

After just a little bit of the reddish brown I realize that I like this very much:



After completing the top of the dress I must approach the bottom in the exact same way: dark blue, followed by light green, followed by adding on the under-painting red for the gold leaf...



At this point I found that the muted reds of the dress were somewhat overwhelmed by the intense chroma of the background colors. My first thought was to change the color on the wall immediately behind the girl: a dark blue layered over with a very pale blue green which I would sand down so that some of the under-painting would show through. And the result? Let's not talk about it.



I came to the realization that it was the intense reds and greens behind the girl that were overpowering the subtler color of the dress. The alternatives were: 1. Tone down the whole background (not likely!!) 2. Paint the dress a brighter red to match or surpass the "carpet" form... and this would take 3 or 4 layers at least... around all those patterns!!!

Or... 3. what of pastel??? I began to use a couple of intense reds over the reddish-brown... and "voila!!!" I love it!!



A few areas with a slight suggestion of shadows and fabric folds and the dress begins to take form:

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Pushing onward I'm now finished with the dress except for some subtle modeling, shadows, and other minor details that I'll work on when I work my way through the figure... which I should be starting tomorrow... beginning at the top... with the hair.

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Accck!!! It was a hot one today... and only got hotter as I turned on the spotlights and then had to stand on the ladder working high up with the full realization that heat rises. In spite of the heat I spent a good 7 1/2 hours in the studio and got a great deal done.

I started with the girl's hair... continuing the orange/red and breaking away from by predilection for brunettes (the contrast of the dark hair making it easy to focus the eyes upon the face). After finishing the hair on one side I used an under-painting layer of blue for the flowers:



I use pastel almost exclusively for people and hair... with an under-painting layer... and sometimes a few touches of acrylic paint... such as the dot of light in the eyes. The hair employed several reds and oranges as well as terra-cotta, sanguine, black, and yellow ochre. The face is also built in layers... at this point the first three colors are layered moving from dark to progressively lighter and hatching in a manner not unlike that which a painter might employ with egg tempera.



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continued...