Once I had a feeling for where everything was, I roughed in the figure. With this painting, I worked a little bit everywhere so that I could understand how all the colors were going to work together. At this point, I already know that there will be highlights on his face and hands, and that the bubbles of inspiration will be bright (somehow).
At this time, I need to work more on the background. I like where the figure is going. I’m looking at what I already have to see what will work as a sphere. I want to use what’s already there for part of this so that it feels like a cohesive piece of art rather than two separate concepts.
I’m using a combination of organic bubbles pulled out of the background and some highlighting in gold around others as incomplete thoughts or concepts. I will also darken the background more to get the bubbles to “pop.”
Here’s the final as it is now. I went back and spent another 5 – 6 hours on the figure. I’ll probably tweak it for another week. I find that I have to walk away and look at something else in order to see what doesn’t fit, or what doesn’t quite work yet. Even as I write this, I see two more places where I should probably put bubbles since the images are already there. In truth, paintings are never finished. There is always something else I could do. The important part is being able to walk away and leave it!
