I’ve been working a bit more on some studies for the glitter war painting that I’m going to do. I think this is my best composition yet.
To start, I took some measurements, and cut the image into thirds (Red lines). The lower third (everything below 1) is ground, the upper two thirds (above 1) are sky.
Then I cut the lower third in half (line 3.) Everything below 3 is the foreground. I then cut the area between 1 & 3 into thirds. The bottom two thirds of this section (between 3 & 4) make up the midground, and the upper third (between 4 & 1) is the background. This is how I went about creating a sense of perspective, and it worked pretty well.
To lay out the verticals, I put the near castle entirely inside the left third (left of A), and had the distant castle fit in the right third (right of B.)
I cut both vertical thirds into thirds again. The near castle took up 2/3 of the left third (left of D.) And the distant castle passes right through the dividing line E in the right third. Finally, F is the third on which the girl is resting her back.
I then sketched the whole thing out, and used packing tape as a frisket so I could paint the sky in a smooth wash.
The sky was a simple wash. Next time, I will wet the paper before I start painting. I do like the tone of the sky.
Oh, I also used masking fluid to Mark highlights on the clouds. This was unnecessary, and detrimental. Don’t do this next time.
While the sky was still wet, I added the distant trees by dabbing some grey on the horizontal line.
I’m falling asleep a as I type, and the rest was really just a matter of painting carefully, always with the top of a sharp brown brush. I’ll post some of the progress photos. Of note: watch how I screw up the castle by making it way too dark, then I lifted some of the pigment to try to bring it back, and repainted the roofs.
