New Layers and a Painting Obstacle

I've started to refine my layering experiment a little more.  My last layer was with dry media on top of Acrylic Ground for Pastels.  Because this "AGP" has a tooth to it and receives stains and washes well, I did a light stain of Quin. Nickel Azo/Gold (Fluid Acrylic) just next to my illustration to make it pop out more from the background, then I started to add a thin layer of white over the illustration.  To make this "veil" I watered down my fluid acrylics then took a short flat synthetic brush and scrubbed the color over the surface, adding more water here and there to lift areas and to create flow in order to achieve a smoothly blended look.  As hoped, this thin paint layer lifted some of my gray and brown dry media to make a grayscale grisaille.

Another project I'm cooking up in the studio is to finish a painting that I started back in 2008, my hope is to have it done by the end of the year so I can start a new painting series in 2012!

I'm using some John Singer Sargent paintings as reference while I tackle the obstacle of making this skirt look like satin.  For this painting I did not photograph a model wearing satin, I just "made it up", so now I'm having to figure out based on her pose, how the textile would drape around her body.  This has resulted in many minutes of me staring at the painting, staring into space, then snacking through my frustration.  Today I had a breakthrough, so tomorrow should be a more productive painting day!