I'm moving into the final stages of work on this picture now..I've just about completed the figures above the railing..I shall finish this area to the lower left hand corner then the rail itself.the final act as always is to rub out the pencil lines of my signature.
I've now finished the lady in red..(There's always a lady in red!)...it was a case of diffusing the colours and adding in more layers until the correct intensity was reached..ie so it matched the other figures...now I've moved on to the next figure and the back ground.
Having put a layer of Blue/Black ink to denote the darkest areas of the rest of the picture..I start to develop the skin tones of the two gentlemen standing at the back,
A simple layer of scarlet dots is enough to begin with..these two ladies heads are close together and the one on the right is wearing a bright red coat..so there Will be a lot of colour bleeding between faces and coat making it difficult to see any boundaries.
Here I'm beginning to add the yellow ochre over the red..I have to keep the lady's feature indistinct to match the others..just a simple suggestion of eyebrows and chin is what I'm looking for..
Here I've rubbed out some of the pencil lines so that i can see clearly the areas I need to blend into each other..this creates the the soft fuzzy out of focus effect. the ladies hair is a mixture light blues dots, red dots and yellow..then shadows are picked out in green .
It's amazing how a pudding can become a metaphor..for life..for marriage..for whatever.This is the world in which i live...I used to sign each of my pictures in the bottom right hand corner with the letters. SIAT..Ok, so it was a bit pretensions after the PRB..(Pre -Raphaelite Brotherhood). But my letters stood for Symbolism In All Things. I believe this statement to be true as far as my work is concerned.But I don't really need to put that on my pictures nowadays as they generate so many questions and theories anyway!
Despite having a little quiet time to myself this afternoon, I only managed to complete the upperhalf of the gentleman to the extreme left..I can't seem to get my head inot gear to concentrate at the moment.I feel tired.
I've just got back from fetching Annie from school..it's turning into a beautiful Autumn.Crunchy leaves underfoot and that particular scent of decay. On the way home , Rowan who walked home with us spotted two cats with the tricolour markings that ours have...I caught myself for one second wondering if Tremble had actually survived and it had all been some silly mistake.But no,these cats were obviously adult sized. Continued walking home feeling quite sad.
I can't believe how different photographs of the same piece can be...this version has a real blue tint to it which makes it appear cold...it's also very difficult to appreciate the subtle tonal differences in the dark area to the lower right which I have spent all day working on.The actual picture is more yellowy and much much warmer.I despair of my stupid camera sometimes...I am saving up for a new one!
This picture shows you how i work almost mechanically when building up areas of one shade..to stop it being too tedious, I work in blocks. I find that keeping my mind on what i intend the finished picture to look like, keeps me going! The result that I'm looking for here is to replicate the depth of shade you can see below the guy in the baseball cap's arm...to do this I first put down a layer of dark blue..then over that goes blue...then red, then yellow ochre then perhaps green...then a further layer of blue or red. 
The jostle of people is beginning to take shape...I have decided to wait a little longer before I start filling the rail in...I don't know why..perhaps when there is more around it..I think it would be better to do it all in one as opposed to in sections.
This close up shows what it is about the Hyperpointillist technique I love...sadly the dots have become a little pixelated by my cropping of the photo...but you get the general idea I hope.
I've not been able to spend much time today working..but as you can see, I've begun to add darker areas..The overall effect (which I'm aiming at) is a soft hazy feel...
I must say..this chap is wearing a very fetching pink t-shirt isn't he?..I like the fact that it gives a softened feel to the scene which will become more apparent later as there are some very dark areas around him. I've meant to do some blurred images of people ever since the picture of 'St Peter's Street' I did early on in 2006.
I've begun applying red dots to the figure's face and arms and some dark blue for the jacket slung over his arm and what forms part of a person next to him. As always, the aim is careful increments of contrast and tone.
It often takes a week of so for me to put together the composistion for a new piece of work.Following on from 'Orbits' I have the basic concept for a new related piece..some time ago I wrote about 'seeing' a picture in my mind which I hoped to use at a future date. whilst preparitory work continues on sketches for that...I have gone back to a picture I started work on a year ago.The Westfield shopping centre in Derby has now been open a year and this sketch comes from photos i took at the time of it's opening.
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