Hela Commission – part 3
by Bryan Fowler - June 2nd, 2009
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.
