The fact of the matter is that some paintings take longer than others. This painting and I have had many 'discussions' over the last couple weeks, and I think we have finally come to an agreement.
I went back and forth many times with this painting and the pics I have are just a few of the stages she went through.
The first pic is about 2 or 3 renditions in and I knew at this point it was going to be a background for the vintage photo you will see in renditions further along. But the background was way too busy. I toned it down a bit using the same silver I was using in the background only thinned out to be more of a glaze.
The second picture is after 2 or maybe 3 layers of the glaze silver.
The third pic is after I added the photo - this is a vintage photo from early 1900's that I scanned and edited and removed the background. I then printed it onto tissue paper and embedded her into the encaustic layers. I then started adding her dress - we have a 'Fabulous Forgeries' themed show starting today in Pensacola at Artel Gallery and I was inspired a bit by Klimt from his gold period. (ok more than a bit :) And that pearl necklace well that was first of no less than 5 versions.....
The fourth and fifth pics are adding gold encaustic paint with a fine tip and my heated pen tool.
At this stage my weekend painting time was done - had to go back to work to support my hobbies. But I wanted to try a couple things to see where I wanted to take this painting next. I made color copies of the 5th photo onto cardstock and in the evening at home after work I tried a couple things - 4 or 5 things actually using colored pencils instead of paint.
The silver rectangles in the background started out as a darker gold, then brighter gold, then a combinations of both golds but the golds just distracted from the dress and photo. I ended up doing the rectangles in silver - not so distracting but yet tying into the dress well.
Then I tried a few things with her face - toyed with the idea of painting her in completely but I haven't ever done a portrait and I liked the way the black and white photo looked for the most part. So I tried just doing hints of color and that looked great - at home, on cardstock, with colored pencils. In the studio - the encaustic was to heavy, so I tried pan pastels and all 3 renditions were too bright, too dark and #3 to bright and too dark.....and guess what, I didnt bring my colored pencils with me to the studio.
I took off several layers of tissue paper/photo with encaustic and pan pastels and made a trip home to get my colored pencils. Lucky for me I have learned from experience to always print a couple extra of the photo I want to use. SOOOO I did the subtle color job that I did on the cartdstock with colored pencils onto my LAST tissue paper copy and again embedded her into the wax and finally got the look I wanted. I redid her pearl necklaces for the 4th time touched up the background and then did all the finicky clean up of smudges and tiny spots, painted her sides gold and got her ready for the show.
I hope she makes it into the show as this theme turned out to be very popular and there were a ton of entries. I also entered the Van Gogh themed painting that I did a couple months ago so we will see how they do.
All for today - Take Care
Tera
