Bird Bath

I finished the first finishing pass, it's a little sunken in but it gives the general idea. I probably should have taken a photo of the underpainting, it had a really cool look. I decided to use a frottis (rub-in) on top of the wipeout to get a general color scheme before I started to window shade my way through the painting. The bird bath was taken from my backyard so it had a wonderful weathered patina but it also meant that the surface was so dull and matte that it absorbed the light like a black hole. This is where my cast training came in handy I just imagined each forms relation to the light and painted it that way while still keeping the values very compressed in order to still keep the weathered look. I also found a lot of subtle hvc shifts that were fun to play with. The background was treated rather sketchy so as not to overkill the amount of detail in the painting and to act as a foil to the birdbath and flower. One of the things that I'm beginning to notice is that when I'm loading these paintings to post them the finished paintings and the poster study, when seen in a one inch thumbnail, look almost identical. That's good. that means my small studies are serving their intended purpose and that they are helping me to conceptualize a bit more rather than just eyeballing the arrangements.