"school's out in njala": finishing up

penultimate photo

getting back to the african landscape i started a few weeks ago, i added some narrow graded, ever-darkening washes to the fields to add some depth. the faces of the near boys needed some work and i had to clean up their legs a bit as i must have been painting with my glasses off when i did them!

"school's out in  njala" (13.5"X15.5")

i fussed a bit with the very small distant figures making sure they read okay.....this was primarily seeing that the dark legs were sort of below the blue shorts which were below white shirts which were below darker "dots" for the kids heads. although i don't think there is a tree in the foreground of dan's photo, i decided to add it to push everything else back a bit. so, i added the dark overhanging leaves/branches in
the upper right hand of the picture frame. i felt they would probably cast a dark shadow on the road on the near right so i darkened that area right of the boys.  little more fussing here and there....like getting the figures under the mid-distance tree on the left in shadow by a light grayish blue glaze, darkening the corresponding tree so it was the same value as the rest of the nearby vegetation, etc. the last thing(s) i painted were the telephone/power poles making sure they lightened in value as they receded and got smaller.

at the time i reached this point, i felt i wasn't adding anything substantive so i decided to declare it finished.