PAINTING WITH SHILOH SOPHIA

Harvest Goddess

The
 making of my
Harvest Goddess

I am getting ready to start an acrylic painting class with Shiloh Sophia and decided to use a 24 inch square of plywood for my canvas. I decided on the plywood so I can hang it outside under my pergola along with a couple more that will come later.

Gessoed plywood

Gessoed plywood

Here it is primed and waiting for my Harvest Goddess to emerge. Right now it is just a blank canvas but soon it will invite me to create a wonderful image. When I do I will invite you to view it.

Temporary studio

Here is the first of the temporary studios I set up but when Ellen got here we decided it would be better to lay the canvas flat so we changed everything around and used my tall cutting table for the substrates.

Live streaming video

I finally got to our live streaming video site but it crashed so they had to give out an alternate site which worked great all through the 6 hour class

The first thing we did was to write down what we wanted to receive from our goddess..I wrote I wanted less technology...

Then, using three colors of our choice we painted the back ground

Next step was to sketch with white paint our design for the harvest queen...

Then we started coloring her in

And adding even more color and detail

Then a wash was painted on over the entire canvas toning down some colors and tinting others and adding depth to all

After that I sort of went off on my own and added some detail and redefined some of the existing design. Mainly her eyes, the sunflowers and leaves around her head.

Here, though it is hard to see I have changed the brown on the leaves to deep turquoise which I like better and darkened the centers of the sunflowers.

That is as far as I got on day one! I think next will be to add some detail to her face and body and finish her eyes and then will see how I like the whole or if I need to add more to background. Shiloh Sophia's painting had a very busy background but I like the look of what I have now and do not want to cover it all up...Background that is...so I will finish the image itself and see what else I think I want to do.

September 17th

Zombie Goddess

September 18th

I started this painting on the 13th and finally I am getting down to the end. Today I did the face and added two more sunflowers so the big one didn't sit on top like a pom pom stuck up there. I do like it better but I am not happy with her face. Eyes, yes but cheeks no...Tomorrow I am going to repaint the cheeks and see if I can get them better...less garish looking...paint in a little more detail and go over some of the detail that has been covered with a wash.

Now I am calling it finished!