Blue herons

Painted cranes

I spent the last two days painting the heron sculpture drawing. Most of it was finished yesterday but I wanted to wait overnight to add in the darkest parts.  When I first started I thought I would add magenta to the teal/turquoise blue.  I thought I would just leave the white paper as highlights, but after a few small strokes the purple didn’t do quite what I wanted so I stopped at that point.  Later it came to me that yellow ocher might be better as a highlight .  I played around with it and the teal and when I felt I had reached a stopping point, I decided to reconsider what to use for the darkest areas.

I liked the way the color had developed  but it still definitely needed depth.  I debated long and hard with myself how I wanted to do it.  I had a thought of using a spatter technique as a mimic of the sculpture’s finish but I would have had to frisquet off all of the background before I could do that.  I was also concerned if I could lay it well enough to emphasize the areas I wanted to, but not overlay in others.  I ended up using a dark sepia and am fairly well satisfied with it.