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Finally finished.  I’m happy with the result but as always the picture in my head was 10 times better.  That’s progress as I can remember a time not so long ago with the pictures in my head were easily 1,000 times better when what my hands produced.

After the inks were dry I broke out my acrylics and threw down some washes of color.  I like a messy, let the color do it’s thing, kind of painting when water is involved.  You can get some great color intensities and effects.  After I laid in my initial washes I started to actually paint opaquely in spots careful not to over paint the inks.  They still had to show through.  In fact, I considered this finished when I approached the point where I could no longer keep going unless I started to paint over the blacks and if I did that this would quickly turn from a commissioned sketch to a full painting.  There wasn’t the time (or the budget) for that.

When I was finish a piece I alwasy let it sit a day or two because after some time away from a painting I alwasy see glaring things that I missed.  In this case it was some cool colors in the shadows.  I had such a warm intense yellow light hitting all that green that I really needed to cool my shadows.  Remember what Richard Schmid says in his wonderful book, “Everything I know about painting“.

If there is one rule about color it’s that “warm light produces cool shadows and cool light produces warm shadows.“

I didn’t want to paint over the blacks so I put strokes of blue and purple in lower light areas and areas of my halftone where the dark meets the light.  I think this really helps the color harmony and add a lot more visual interest to the piece.

The most important part is that the client loved it and has already commission a second piece.