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.