KALI - beginnings

For those who follow my blog, my previous work on animation was completed successfully. During the process my laptop died and is now being resuscitated at the Apple Genius Bar. So I can't update with anything on that system for a while. However I have had some photos sitting on my iPhone for about a month.

Here is my beginning process on the Kali painting.

I began by selecting which canvas I would be working on, then I did a quick jiffy marker sketch to show the model what we would be attempting to achieve. This led to this.......

I used crosshairs to centralize my image at the belly button. I gridded out some of the area to speed up the process of putting the charcoal drawing down.

Here is the full figure with all four arms drawn on the canvas in charcoal.

In the third studio visit for this piece, I locked down the image with a clear gesso and to limit the spread of charcoal in the paint.

I then blocked in a variety of dark brown tones for the background. Initially I intended on painting the character with green skin to set it off on a warm background, but then things got fun and I went a little further on the background and may be chaining my initial idea, that's what happens with inspiration in the studio.

 I rubbed in more colour, and gold and wet the surface creating a variety of drips and splashes. I am still considering how I will go about the treatment of the flesh, one idea is to paint it very dar and paint bones on top to make her even more frightening. WE will see what happens as the painting unfolds.......