Painting progress on 2 big paintings

Hi peeps, 

It was difficult to fit art making into this last week, but I did manage to make some progress on a couple of the pieces I have on the go, so here is a small update.

The one I have been focusing on most has been my Stranger Things painting, and I made a fair amount of headway on it. 

Here's where it was at the last we spoke :

And here it is now :

I really hope my scanner will do the very subtle colours and layers on Max's face justice...

I have a few more tiny details to add and some wrinkles to smooth out (figuratively), and I also need to add the tape unravelling from the cassette and into the sky, and then I should be done! 

Serendipitously, I got an email from Redbubble only a few days ago saying that they had finally worked out a deal with Netflix regarding selling fan art and that we should now be able to sell our art of their franchises on the platform. I appreciated the timing of that announcement! XD

So I suspect this piece will only be available on my Redbubble, unless I decide to brave the IP law gods and offer prints on my personal store...In all honesty, I'd rather be safe than sorry so I suspect it will go up on Redbubble. Netflix is scary...

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Next, I did some more work on the forest piece.

Here is where we left off last time : 

And here's the progress from this week : 

It was nerve wracking but I forced myself to jump into recreating the lighting I did in my digital mock-up.
I have also been tinkering with the face a lot, as something just isn't sitting right and I can't seem to put my finger on it so I will keep trying new things. 

Conveniently but unsurprisingly, painting over the linework I had done on the face and sketching over that made the face look more like it is being illuminated by the rays of sun (which makes sense, anything in bright light will have lower contrast than stuff in shadow, so getting rid of that linework helped achieve that effect). It was one of those consequences that taught me something, and I think this piece will be full of lessons as I go along.

The coloured lines in the second image are masking tape, and took absolutely FOREVER to put on, but should make working on the light beams easier. 

I have been doing some studies of dappled light in preparation for this piece so I'll share those in a video later this month.

I have made peace with the fact that this painting will be slow going. There is a lot of detail and the lighting effect will be tricky to implement effectively, so I am taking my time with it.

I have also made peace with the fact that I don't think I will succeed fully. The effect I am trying to achieve is trickier than my skill set, and I will stumble a lot along the way, so I have tried to let go of my expectations and just go with the flow.
Everything I have done on it so far has taught me a whole lot of lessons about lighting, as well as about my style, and I am actually really enjoying how complex the process is and how conscientious I have to be, so I look forward to seeing where this leads. 

And that's it for this update! 

I will probably start painting the bigger painting next week, and I am actually quite excited about it, and I look forward to sharing that with you!

I hope you are all well,
Have a wonderful week-end,
All my love,
M