The Muse Part III - The Finish

With a few more hours of work yesterday and again tonight, I think I'll call this one complete...for now :-)  Yep, there is always a chance (a good chance) I'll fiddle with it a little more but any changes I make from here on out will be pretty minor.

Yesterday I added greenish moss and growing things to the stone. I got a little carried away and ended up removing about 2/3 of the moss. That much moss (it was a lot!) just didn't "read" right to me in this context. Sometimes less is more, I guess. In this case, I think the huge amounts of moss detracted from the sculpture and added too much warmth and interest to the background. Removing most of it did the trick of softening the stone a little and bringing a little life into the background.

I also toned down and cooled some of the brights in the sculpture. They were a little too bright and competed with the Jaguar for interest. On the Jaguar, I adjusted the light source a little, darkening, and in places cooling, more of the animal's left side and adding some purple reflected light.

Today I spent time pulling everything together - putting green and purple reflected light on the Jaguar since it will definitely be picking up the colors of its surroundings. The green is subtle but I felt it did its job of tying the animal a little closer to the background.

I added some glazes of warmth to the sculpture - oranges and browns - to repeat some of the warm tones that are in the Jaguar.

I also toned down some of the green moss by glazing over it with a muted red.

"God of the Night Sun" Oil on textured panel, 24"x30"

Time for me to move on to other paintings for now...



All text and pictures copyright Nancy Rynes, 2013. You may link to this site, but please do not copy anything from it without my written permission.

The Muse Takes Control Part II

Even a few days away from the easel didn't take away from an internal need to work on this painting. Today's work, about 5 hours' worth, consisted of developing the background sculpture of the Mayan deity.

Modeling the sculpture was a little more difficult than I thought - I kept the paint layers relatively thin and transparent, although thicker ("fatter") than the base layer from last time. I wanted to indicate the sculpture's three dimensionality but at the same time keep its colors cool so that it would stay "behind" the Jaguar.

The colors I used were muted versions of purple, green, blue, and even a little red.

I tried to keep the detail on the sculpture at a minimum because I want the main detail to be in the Jaguar, making it the focus.

Stage 4 on "God of the Night Sun" Oil on texture panel, 24"x30"

Now I'll let this dry overnight and tomorrow will work on muting down the background sculpture a bit. I might even add a few plants and vines and mosses to soften all of that rock.

Continue to Part III...

Content and paintings are copyright Nancy Rynes, 2013. You may link to this page, but please do not copy or in any way use these works without my written consent.