Here’s the next installment of my progress discussion of “Wanderlust" recently completed for my solo show, Aurora at Thinkspace Gallery LA.
I kept adding layers of iridescent medium or iridescent white paint mixed with crushed pastels and acrylic and water to layer the opaque colours you see- the leaves, owls, body, etc. I also combined that with some hatching using a pen or a coloured pencil to give it depth and form. I had to redraw the face a lot. It was a struggle!
I made the top nest/head leaves yellow and orange, cascading down the body to yellow green, silvery green and a deeper green at the legs for a colour shift effect.
I also counterbalanced this colour gradient by making the owls faces go from blue in the bottom right, to blue green, to green, to yellow green, through to yellow up the top. I feel like making these colours shift adds movement.
The leaves give a wavelike silhouette to the foreground which is enjoyable to play with, I’m trying to give everything as much rhythm and variety in shape and colour as possible while maintaining the unity.
I haven’t decided what to do with the background yet, but now that the foreground and middle ground elements are done, it’s time to tackle that.
I’ll post the last step tomorrow. Thanks for reading!