Any progress is some progress...

Spent about 3 hours with the painting today. I learned my lesson with 10 p.m. (see link to my online gallery) so I decided to deal with the negative space BEFORE the actual images are finished. I always come into the painting with a preconceived notion for the negative space-- it's kind of intuitive. For this one, I chose Permanent Green Light right out of the tube (I use Golden Acrylics). I rarely use raw color, but this just felt right. The slight color shift towards the three figures on the left was an impulse, though. Nothing's ever too "precious" for me to experiment with, especially at this stage of the game. Sometimes it pays off. Sometimes it doesn't.

I was taking a break... just staring at it while listening to some Van Halen when I decided to go for it. Mixed the PGL with Hansa Yellow Medium. It's subtle, probably too subtle. Not sure if I like it. And the green's nowhere near flat enough yet. I'll live with it for a while before reaching a final conclusion-- I can always take it back to the original color. But at least with the background established, I'll understand more about the proper tonality for the figures. I fixed some of the bad contours with the green paint, while I made some of it worse. I do plan on grounding them, too, at the end. In all, it's nice to take a few steps forward.