The Raven Continues…..

As I mentioned last time, we are in “travel mode” which translates to “not much painting time” usually.  Fortunately, I did manage to find a few hours the other day…..

I’m all over this thing!  LOL!  I’ve worked in the background, the middle, and on the Raven.  Trying out different techniques for textures and lighting.  I really want to achieve a lot of depth in the background and that is going to require many layers of trees and moss with each layer being more detailed then the last.  I started out by making all the trees, branches, and mossy areas very light and transparent.  I am now in the process of deciding which will be in the distant background, which will be middle, and finally foreground.

This is a close up of the upper right hand corner of my board.  I spent a lot of time working with that mossy area and I’m pretty happy with the results at this point.  These are ‘middle ground’ trees and moss.  I’ve added some fainter tree limbs in behind and I think I may need to add a few more distant tree trunks….time will tell.  That is the nice thing about working with transparent washes, I can pretty much go back into the distant background and not worry about disturbing what’s in front.  To bring something forward in the background, I just add deeper shadows, highlights, and details.

Normally I would have much more of the background done before moving on to the raven, but I needed to see the darkness or richness of color to better put the background in proper prospective.  I soon realized that in order to get the ‘sparkle’ of sunlight on the beak and later on some of the feathers, I needed to darken up the area behind the bird.  I’ve just started working out that process.

This is such a departure for me, but I’m so loving the exploration into the unknown.  What better companion then the wise and mysterious Raven.

We are currently in Alabama.  Enjoying a lovely rv park with mossy oaks and a small grove of tall pines behind us….smells like Christmas here.  Incidentally if you are interested to know more about our travel journey, you can find more details here on my travel blog.