David's Head - completion

Today I spent more time rearranging his eyes, mouth, ear, and nose.  The plan was to use Derivan Matisse background acrylic but none of the colors I had seemed suitable, so I opted for India ink and used fairly heavily upper right then more dilute to finish the background.  You can certainly see where the pages are showing although most are covered by gouache.  For now am done with the series on Michelangelo's David.

WIP continued David's Head

Here I have added gouache using 1" sable flat brush and Turner paints on 22x15 Fabriano 140 lb hot press paper.  More work is needed on his eyes but I have the basic skin tones down using white, burnt sienna, cad orange and red.  It is interesting to see the printed pages and the effects underneath paint.  There's a big show next weekend I'd like to enter with him if I get through in time.  It is raining cats and dogs here since Wednesday so lots of indoor time equals painting time! Yay! Any excuse to paint more...stay tuned!

Work in Progress: David's Head in gouache

Beginning charcoal sketch of Michelangelo's statue of King David.  This is over phone book yellow pages adhered to Lanaquarelle 140 lb hot press paper, and is a work in progress.  Yesterday I had finished my watercolor study of David's head in preparation of this I'll do in gouache, using Turner paints.  The phone book pages are laid on top of a 1:1 ratio matte medium to water mixture brushed on, then strips of 1" wide masking tape on top of the pages, let set for 10 minutes and then remove tape and as much of the pages possible.  I let this one set about a minute too long as it did not all peel off.

House of David

15x11 gouache on Saunders 300 lb paper, another version of Michelangelo's sculpture of David he created 1501-1504.  I cut a failed painting in half and applied gouache over the background as well as the figure first.  I'll show the beginning ink sketch below.  A few years ago I bought Susan Boyle's Christmas CD that she'd recorded Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, the story of King David's temptation with Bathsheba.  So the lyrics were dancing in my head throughout this work, hence the significance of the upside down modern day houses.

 In this image, only the figure has been painted using Turner's gouache.  I'd like to keep the house windows and may paint over the rest.

Initial ink sketch using black India ink dropper only over the upside down old dog watercolor.  Total time:  2 hours.

Michelangelo's David

18x12 mixed media and ink on Strathmore 140 lb cold press paper.  I drew an ink outline yesterday of statue of David (sculpted by Michelangelo between 1501-1504), onto dry paper I had collaged phone book pages onto.  I then added gouache to him and background.  After drying, I covered the entire paper with black India ink. When that dried, I ran lukewarm water over the image.  To lose more ink, I should've worked on 300 lb watercolor paper.  It was quite splotchy so I went back in with gouache then painted over background again with ink.  When all was dry I used silver and gold Caran D'Ache wax pastel crayons for linear work.  Today I've drawn David again over a failed work which will post tomorrow.  Here below are the steps for this finished work: