I have been quietly working away on this beauty and watching it unfold on the board, it has been slow going between other jobs and trying not to rush finish it, but I feel like I am making good progress. This painting is also a lot larger than my usual A5 boards, ‘Last Sleep’ is 16 x 21 inches, below are some progress pictures.
The process so far:
> Traditional rabbit skin glue on my board, two thin coats, sanded.
> Umber wash to tone the board, OMS and umber.
> Various amounts of sketching and scaled drawing to get the right composition at this point, it can take a while to get the drawing as I imagined it in my head. I use a wax based pencil Faber-Castell Polychromos or a Pitt Pastel, this way I can erase as much as I need to. When I am happy I seal this layer with a fixing spray.
> Umber under painting, sometimes called a grisaille, it will help me to determine the darks lights and mids of this painting, I try to omit all colour at this stage. This is where I am at in the image above so far.