I haven't had a lot of time in the studio over the last few days. We had the plumber out and then I was tied up with a lot of petty business issues that just ate far more time than I'd thought. I finally got back to this WIP... Athena? Or Freyja?... Not sure yet. And I had to deal with the eye... (and I'm still not satisfied with how it looks below... but I'll have more time to deal with that when I really begin to work on rendering the face). Beyond that, I'm still not sure about what I'm doing with the torso, arm, and hair at the bottom/right. So I focused on the halo around her. I'll deal with the bottom of the painting when I raise it higher up on the wall.
The tessellations took some time... and I will need to paint over the vertical and horizontal guidelines because these can show through the pastels... especially the white. I need to do the gold leaf in the trim before I start with the pastel. Here (above) I've laid down the adhesive which will rapidly dry... yet remain tacky enough for the metal leaf.
The gold leaf is the most miserable part of these paintings in the Summer because the fans must all be shut off and the windows closed due to the fact that the slightest breeze can blow the metal leaf away. At this point, it's all adhered and now I need to brush the excess away. The gold will only remain where the adhesive was at.
Considering the fact that I haven't really completed a new painting in a year... and considering I am dealing with a new format and scale... I decided to employ a similar color scheme to the last painting I completed so that I can more rapidly complete this work and really get back into the flow of painting again. The top half of the halo will be gold with some sort of design.
Even the most basis colors are not simply a single color out of the box. I always employ a reddish matte primer that sparkles through across the surface helping to unify the painting as a whole. This technique is rooted in Venetian Renaissance paintings and the common use of colored paper for pastels. There are three blues used in each diamond and three whites. Sometimes I'll use 5 or more colors. From a distance, the colors appear flatter and more polished with a slight vibration... but up close you can see the individual marks which I feel is essential to me.