Finishing my painting

As promised, here is the conclusion to the painting I began telling you about here. This is a scene from a book titled Priscilla and the Hollyhocks where Priscilla, a young girl born to a slave in North Carolina in the 1830's, watches her mother carried off and sold, the last time she will ever see her. This may sound like a very dark beginning, but the story has a lot of hope and Priscilla is fiercely brave and resourceful.

But back to the painting...

After laying in a few washes, I began working up the color more. I try to lay out where the basic areas of shadow and light will be, particularly in the grass, which sets up the space in the picture.


Next I started to paint in the features in this character's face, and outline her shape.


Here I started to layer her skin tone, and add some lighter shades of green to the grass.


Still layering skin tones, also added in the folds of her dress.


Here she was just about done, but something didn't seem right. I decided the tone of her expression needed to be matched by a more somber blue color on her dress, so I painted over the robin's egg color here. Also, the log cabin is a little too perfect, needs to be roughed up a bit.


Here we go, much better!


In this scene Priscilla stands mournful, scared and shocked at what is happening. The text states "Ma turned her anguished face to me, raised one hand in farewell. I lacked the strenth to wave back, tho I 'spect my eyes mirrored her sorrow."