After the planning stage I started on the painting in a conventional manner with the sky then the background. I repainted the sky a couple of times to get a look that I was happy with, using some very careful blending. The background was much easier. I used a similar technique to painting water, always working horizontally across the image, but swapping the colours to create a foreboding unsettling landscape.
The translucent cape was the hardest part of this painting. After finding many images of translucent floaty material, I drew one particularly appropriate piece to get a feel for the fabric.
After that, again working in pencil, I worked out what I wanted the cape to look like, mainly sinuous, sinister and floaty. I drew it in four separate pieces to be overlaid when it came to the painting stage.
Tracing these drawings was the next stage to add them to the painting. (I'm not adverse to tracing when I've actually drawn the original.) I only transferred the outline on to the painting, as I kept the drawing as a reference for the shading later.
Rather than blather on about how I painted them in writing, I'll blather on about them in video form:
As I was painting the material I would go back and forwards between the painting and a Photoshop version where I could try out placements for new pieces of fabric. This was particularly of use when it came to the pieces snaking around her arms which were not in my original plan.
The rest of the painting was fairly straightforward. Easily the most fun part was the hair. Starting with a dark basecoat I applied fine hair detail in white.
It was then just a matter of using thin washes to develop the colours and tones to exactly where I wanted them. (The 'just' part of that last sentence was a full day of 'just'.) It was a really satisfying process and one that I have used significantly on my next painting. But not for hair. (See below for a sneak preview.)
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