Nevermore

So.  Colours.  This is my blue three layer colour scheme, so cerulean blue goes down first, followed by French ultramarine and then quinacridone magenta.  I have to be careful with the third layer because the French ultramarine in the second layer isn’t a staining colour, so might get loosened and lifted if I’m too vigorous.  I wanted to introduce a yellow too, to use to distinguish the foreground from the background and avoid having the raven floating in mid air.  I chose raw sienna because I didn’t want too saturated a yellow and because my notes from earlier paintings suggest raw sienna when combined with quinacridone magenta and either of those blues makes for quite a chilly feeling painting.

There are four elements to the painting:

– The sky was just the two blues put fairly randomly into wet paper, leaving white gaps for clouds.  I could have used some of the red in places but it looked too good with just the blues: I wasn’t going to change that.

– All four colours are used in the foreground, fairly randomly except that I’ve tried to make the shadowy area a bit darker.  I must have put in three or four layers before getting to the dark value I was looking for.

– The EAP portrait is the standard three layer portrait with hints from the Artist Assist App.

– The raven is also in three layers: cerulean blue, then French ultramarine, then quinacridone magenta but there was other stuff going on too.  Before the first layer went down I spattered over some masking fluid for a starry background (and removed any spatters that went over the rest of the painting).  More masking fluid went down after the cerulean blue layer to reserve the eye, a line on the beak and some shapes around the feathery bits.  I use a light blue coloured masking fluid so I can see it against a white background; when there’s cerulean blue behind it, it’s difficult to tell whether I’ve actually removed the masking fluid.  Oh well.  What else?  Well I dripped in some granulation medium, water and dry paint after each layer, hoping to get similar effects to what I did with Jimi Hendrix.  And in the third layer, I had to leave an empty space round EAP for the second layer to show up behind his head: I used a bit of water to soften the inner edge of the ring of magenta that I put around him.

And, after leaving everything to dry no removing the masking fluid, that was me done.

And I have to say I’m really pleased with this one.  Everything came out according to plan and the sky background is off the charts.  It was also a great decision to indicate the eye and the beak rather than just leaving the raven as a silhouette.  The portrait itself was quite small and fiddly but came out looking great.  I was wondering at one point whether I should have made the portrait bigger by just going for the head rather than head and shoulders but, no, head and shoulders worked.  EAP is up for sale. To see the price, click here.