"the betrothal of miss victoria": wrap-up

starting point for background

i tweaked a few of the features on the lady's face and finished the fellow's face. i didn't a huge dark all alone down in the right corner so i let the clothing sort of fade out near the bottom and right. the main thing was the background. still struggling somewhat with this. i am going to have to have a long talk with ted nutgall when he is here in a few weeks about his ideas and how he decides what to do. right now i think that the backgrounds along with composition are the major things that i need some work on.

to get back to the background, i painted on successive glazes of yellow, and a variety of blues looking for just the right tint. the first was ultramarine blue which because of the red in it left things a little dingy and grayer than i wanted. the second was cobalt which was pretty pure , transparent blue which brought it back toward the freshness i was looking for. the last which i am going to stick with was a light value wash of peacock blue that i found in my "blues" drawer waaaaaaaay in the back. it may be just a little too "sweet" but i am already just a bit darker than i intended to go and i opted to leave it at this stage rather than search for the perfect hue only to have too dark a painting.

here is the beginning point for the background and the end after a few the stages as i went through with each of several washes each done with a #26 round brush. of note, i did apply each glaze over the *right* or shadow sides of the figures to "plant" them into the scene and to help that recede a bit. i then went back after each wash while it was still wet and softened the hard edge. all in all, i think this came out pretty close to what i was striving for.

"the betrothal of miss victoria" (15"X20")