I wanted to drop this image here and give a quick update. Been difficult to get studio time in but I’m off the next week so hoping to get this one closer to completion.
I’ve put a second pass in on the rest of the violin as well as the right-side hand. Still need to resolve the white patch of the shirt and the biggest compositional change is removing the yellow block in the upper right corner. I don’t think it was working as I had expected. I’m planning on going over the background with more of a subtle gradient and more texture, hopefully that will give a more aesthetic effect.
Still a ways to go but closing in on the final image.
I got a chance to block in the white panel of the shirt front. Something that really only painters might know, but painting white forms is actually quite difficult. I recall at the Academy that several exercises revolved around painting white objects, be it a plaster cast or just a handful of white eggs. With a full palette it’s difficult to do this without the white object looking mono-chromatic.
The trick is to fall back on temperature changes but that requires finding a complimentary pair that neutralizes to grey but can be pushed either warm or cold regardless of the relative value. I usually fall back on Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna when I need a chromatic grey and this works pretty well shifting whites along the temperature gradient as well as the value one. I may have gone a bit too cold in the darkest whites but it’s a good first pass that still reads as white without being just bland white paint.
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