The development of a figure painting… Swing Song again

Today I puttered on a couple of paintings including my violinist.  She’s been in the pile an awfully long time and, as I looked at the variety of photos I’ve taken of her, I can see some interesting developments.  So, here’s a look back in time.  

Today, after another 90 minutes of puttering, she looks like this:

The photo below was taken yesterday…  I was liking the dark band and vertical behind her but felt that the light and dark were too far apart in value.  Also, the transparent dark green paint was fighting with the absorbent ground and quite streaky.  I developed the sense of light on the figure and it’s now more dramatic. 

The signed version below had a very choppy background which I kind of liked at the time but I’ve since changed my mind.  I bought some absorbent ground a while ago and recently I decided to experiment a bit on this painting.  I put two coats of the stuff on the background and, once dry, I laid in very light transparent washes.  Once dry I added the dark green bands you see above.  WOW!  That’s some kind of interesting acrylic medium.  It absorbs so much that it’s almost like 300lb watercolor paper…  some interesting things happened with all the hills and valleys on the surface. 

The 3 images below are earlier stages and I show them to give some of the background of the paint.  There are so many layers on that surface now.  It all adds up to interesting!  You can see I’m struggling with the girl’s right hand and the placement of the bow.  From the first “oh, I see a violinist!!!” I’ve been struggling with how to get this thing to work.  It might not be much of a painting – ever.  But, it’s certainly been a good workshop for me.  Cheers!