Yeah, I got to spend time painting today. I worked on the underpainting for the leaf jacket in Bluebird of Happiness. I knew going in that it wouldn’t be easy to do – I have to give the jacket dimension while also giving the leaves dimension – and the leaves are piled on top of each other. I think I got a good start on it.

At this point the face looks more dimensional than the jacket.

You can discern the sleeves and lapel from the body of the jacket, but I don’t think the sleeve has much shape – it looks a little flat. I’m going to let it dry and then glaze burnt umber onto the edges of the sleeves to show folds and depth. I could just start glazing with green at this point, but I thought I’d get the underpainting as developed as possible before I start glazing in the color.

One way to see how the painting is progressing is to look at it in a mirror. That will show you any problems that you have going on and that you can’t see just looking at the painting directly. One of your eyes is always stronger than the other, so that looking at the painting reversed in the mirror lets you see if the face is getting contorted.

I just reversed this picture in Photoshop and I can tell that the side of the face nearest the bird isn’t  going back enough. That just means that it isn’t turning back enough. I’ll have to work on using a darker value on that side of the face. Remember: Light Values come forward and Dark values go back.

Turning the painting upside down will also help you look at it with fresh eyes. However, the upside view only helps you see if the composition is balanced – it won’t help you see if the face is contorted.

I played around with the background a little bit by glazing on a little color. I want the background to be fairly abstract. I might play around with a few background options in Photoshop. I’d thought of doing a series of four women : Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Trite, I know, and over done. However, it would make that collection of four pieces that I keep hearing people licensing your work are looking for. If I did that then I might add the words Earth or Earth Mother into the background – I would probably leave the painting as is and add the words in Photoshop.

Just starting to build up some color – I don;t want to make the sky blue (because of the bluebird) so will probably stick with a glowing orange and yellow  sky depicting sunrise.

I stood back from the painting and thought that the face and hand looked pretty realistic. That’s when I noticed that my wonderful new easel leaves a 3-4 inch shadow on the top of the painting – not a good thing – especially when I’m painting small. May have to attach a light to the side of the easel. Bought one a long time ago, but it didn’t give off enough light to paint by in a large room , but it might be just enough for this situation.