Process of "Underneath It All" Painting

Here are some shots of the process of my Last Man Standing Round 1 "Underneath It All" entry.

Sketch phase: Started out with a digital sketch to play with compositions and then collaged some photos. Then just went in with charcoal on gessoed masonite. I was originally going to put the girl in a grave yard but then i decided to avoid the "goth" feel.


Detail of the figure in sketch phase:

I got very impatient with the sketch and decided to dive into the oils without fully resolving the figure and a lot of the secondary elements. Bad idea on my part.


And this is where the frustration started. Lots of noodling at an early stage, wiping down the paint back to the sketch stage, and lots of screaming at myself about how much I suck at painting.





Then my usual issues start coming through; gimpy feet and head that's WAY too big. No matter what my intentions are I always end up making the head about twice as big as when i started out.



After repainting the head two more times and more noodling in the background things started coming together. Now on to my dreaded enemies, the hands.



With the deadline fast approaching and the hands giving me all sorts of trouble I decided to stop here and fix the mistakes digitally.

24x48 inches Oil on Masonite


Digitally I enhanced the saturation and color of the figure and laid in more snow to further delineate what is above ground and what is below. Added some better looking trees to the background. And then continued struggling with those hands. This is where the image was at when it was time to submit it for Last Man Standing.



I let it sit for a few days and then tried to fix it some more to send it of for Spectrum 15. I made the figure smaller and moved it down some. Fixed the hands a little.



Related Post: Last Man Standing 3 - Round 1 - Underneath It All