Managed to get two days in the studio this weekend. It took a lot out of me, but I really wanted to get some real paint on these two surfaces.
Saturday I worked on the Rainbow Obsidian D20 painting. This one had a strong drawing underpinning it and has been much easier to work on than I expected.
I wasn’t sure what color I was going to pick for the background to compliment the die, but when looking closer I realized that there’s really no green in the “rainbow” colors on the faces. So decided to go with a slightly more chromatic version of the “old master” green hue to start with. I may tweak it a bit, but it’s a good starting place.
After getting the obsidian parts blocked in, it was just a matter of grinding through the faces one at a time.
This feels like a good first chromatic pass. There’s still a lot of work to do all over but this should be a solid place to build on. There’s a bit of texture in the exposed obsidian parts that will need a lot of scumbling work and the light faces are going to be difficult to capture in terms of hue and value but that’s for the next pass.
These two paintings feel like they’re both rainbows in a way but despite that they really couldn’t be more different. The Obsidian one is very structured and orderly and the Prismatic Glass one is really about capturing the chaotic light effects that play within the structure of the die.
On Sunday I worked on the first chromatic layer for the next Prismatic Glass D20 portrait. I’m starting to wonder if it was a good idea to start another one of these, they’re a lot of work and will take more concentration to get the correct effect of the light moving through the die.
This one needs a lot of work but at least there’s some color down to build up on for the next layers. There’s still some drawing issues that will need to be resolved and I’m not sure about how warm or cool to make the background but it has potential. I just need to put the work in. I’m sure you’ll be seeing this one again for a while before it’s completed.
Two rainbows with very different trajectories.
Leave a Reply