Week 3 Work

This week I focused on the painting I had a vision of at the end of last week.

I began by sketching:

I did this immediately after coming up with the idea so that it wouldn't run away on me before I could remember what it looked like, as is what frequently happens.

Then I went to work on building a colour image I could actually reference while painting:

I built a Frankenstein figure out of multiple stock photos to achieve the pose I had envisioned, which strangely enough I could not find anywhere on the internet.  I had thought it was a common enough pose, but it turns out it isn't.  It also posed some incredible proportion and angular problems for me, who has enough trouble drawing the figure elegantly.  

I traced that image onto my canvas, attempting to fix a few of the perceptible problems just by drawing from memory right away.  I also moved the image when I traced this to get her head out of that weird angle, but it somehow happened anyway.  I wanted her left hand lying across her lap so I had to draw that in myself as well.  

Then I started laying down colour:

This involved making a few colour choices that were not dictated by my colour composite, but I was mostly trying to establish shape and get my bearings for light an shadow.  It also made it much easier to see what issues were happening with the figure. There is obviously something really weird going on with her neck and shoulders.  Her right forearm is made up of some weird angles and the proportions there seem to be a little off.  Her left knee is probably a bit pointy. I was having trouble trying to resolve these issues strictly by drawing, so I enlisted the help of a friend to sit for me.  Couldn't really find an adequate table, but I think we still got the right angle.

I got a model to help:

And I made these corrections:

And this is where I'm at now.

 

However, I did get some time to work on the tartan a bit, too. 

Version 7

Version 8

Version 9

Version 10

I'm still not 100% happy with it.  I think the white sections need to be wider, but I need to figure out how to do that without the original check becoming too uneven.  I also switched from the green check in the centre in version 7 to the red check in the centre in the last three versions, but I kind of like how the green looked better.  In this last version, I definitely worked out colour combinations for individual stripes, bringing in an even darker shade of blue than I had been using that really adds some depth.  I think I want to try this combination reversed for next week.