Dreams 01 - Finished

I’ve finished ‘Dreams 01’, just working over the flesh, sharpening things up, adding more contrast etc. I’m really glad I settled on keeping it grey rather than flesh coloured I don’t think it would be half as interesting if I hadn’t done it this way.
I’ve also started a new piece today of two sheep…I’ve sealed the drawing with acrylic, so you can’t really see it that clearly in a photo, so I haven’t bothered posting it yet. I’m going to paint the sheep in grey, the sky in blue and everything else in gold, so it’ll be another experiment to see how far I can push things but it feels like I’m getting close to a style I can run with now :)
Once again many thanks to Mary for posing for the ‘Dreams’ painting, and Jack and Mary for ‘Awake’ hope you like them…more to follow :)

Progress...

I made a little more progress on a couple of these pieces the other day. ‘Awake’ has been carved to sharpen up the gold lines. ‘The House’ has been gilded. Finally, I’ve started on the background for ‘Dreams_01’, it’ll need another coat to build up some of the darker areas and I’ve decided leave the figure in black and white rather than colour it, so that’ll need some tidying up and then it’ll be done. :)

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 02

More work on the “Dreams 01” painting today, I’ve worked in more detail and contrast, there are still some highlights etc to go in, but it needs to dry for a while now :)

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 01

I’ve been doing some work on this first painting from the “Jack and his friends” modelling session today. The aim is to fuse the recent gold experiments with a more ‘finished’ piece of painting. If it all works out I’ll be using the techniques I’m exploring here along with the first gold experiments (the man with a dog one in particular) to produce a series of paintings.
As you can see I’ve applied the gold and am currently working on the under painting. I’ve painted the mid tones and next I need to balance these as I start pushing the highlights and shadows to increase the contrast. As I do this I’ll begin to sharpen the details and then it’ll need to dry before the colour is glazed over the top…then I can start on the gold over painting :)
The painting is (currently) called “Dreams 01” and the model is Mary.