underpainting, cont'd

I found a window of time to work on my painting, so I've now done the full colour underpainting. Right now the colours are looking mostly right but are somewhat flat and texturally unremarkable, so the next stage will involve another layer of colour, using finer brushes and more attention to detail. Basically cleaning up some of the edges and refining. I'm thinking that mixing in some textured impasto paste will add liveliness to the surface too. Let's see what happens! :)

Painterdise

Well it has been awhile but recently I started a new painting. It's based on the Bird of Paradise flower, these particular flowers are said to represent joy and... paradise. I chose this particular subject for its vibrancy and distinctiveness. It also means I'll get to have fun with pure strong acrylic colours as well as softer tints in the later stages.

For now I've just completed a monochromatic tonal wash/underpainting of sorts. I'm still making up my mind about the background, at any rate it'll be something the flowers can contrast strongly against. Now it's a matter of creating a colour palette, doing a full colour underpainting, and honing in on details. The sketch was based loosely on a number of photographic studies. To make a pleasing composition I flipped and (mentally) scaled up the foreground flower and overlapped it with another one. One thing I noticed, no two of these flowers are alike, and I saw at least twenty of them. Let the fun begin. :)