Monday, September 27, 2010

Trevi Fountain - Step 7


It's time to start sculpting the rocks and figures by adding some dark areas to give them form. It's the shadows that define the rocks and make them seem three-dimensional. Notice how I've tried to make the shadows visually interesting by fluctuating from warm to cool. At this point, I also wanted to put in my darkest area so that I could balance everything else according to that value. This usually helps keep me from being too light in other areas.



I'm still not completely sure how I'm going to tackle the falling water, so I tread lightly. The first step is to paint around the white parts of the water with the lightest version of the underlying color.




Now, this doesn't look much like water yet, so you have to be patient. All I'm doing here is starting to define the shapes underneath the water. You don't want the rocks to be very clear since you are seeing them through a wall of water. It's too difficult to paint soft, wet-into-wet edges here since I'm trying to paint around the white water, so I have to rely on jagged outlines to make the rocks appear to have soft, blurry edges (picture an impressionistic painting).


All in all, I'm pleased with how things are turning out so far, but I realize the most important and difficult parts of the painting are still to come.