Evolution Of A Painting: Woman In Water

The idea for this painting came to me pretty much fully formed: an image of a woman emerging from a pool of water, hair slicked back, bathed in splashes of vibrant, exaggerated and highly unrealistic lighting. I started with a quick sketch and divided it up into a grid.

I then divided up the canvas into an equivalent grid and used the sketch as a rough guideline. I was working fast here and not very much concerned with accurately capturing the sketch so this was more to keep it from falling horribly off the rails rather than a measured approach to accuracy of any kind.

I started by laying in some of the blacks to get a bit of a sense for how it would all shape up. I wanted the end image to be very cartoon in a sort of comic book or graffiti way.

I decided to go with a purple-blue colour scheme and started with the hair.

I had some fun doing the shadows by starting with the outlines and leaving the interiors void, playing around with a chrome look early on.

I streaked in black and blue alternately to build up the hair outside of the water.

Having laid down most of the shadow I decided to lay down some highlights to see how the colour scheme would work out. I played with using softer more yellow tones for the highlights but ended up preferring the vibrant magenta, with a really sharp, unnatural falloff.

I then started to put in some mid-tones, which I decided to keep the same colour as the shadows.

Filling in the mid-tones the chrome look is complete, with the shadowed zone appearing as a sort of strange amorphous region. I decided to fill this in and make it more of a proper shadowed zone to make the image a bit more readable and add some depth. I also decided that I didn't really want to push for the chrome look, having not really committed to it elsewhere in the painting.

Filling in the shadow the image takes on a different look, more vibrant, less faded 70's science fiction novel cover. I considered going over the major lines in black to really drive the whole cartoon aesthetic, as though it was inked, but realized that would darken the image and was unnecessary as there was already lots of clarity to the lines.

I took a stab at filling in the transition where the hair meets the water. I didn't want it to be flat, but also not realistic either, to suggest more of a divide. Pushing in some blues I realized this was darker than I wanted but decided to revisit later.

I had been using fine brushes up to this point and took a bit of a break to block in the background. I decided to do it as a sort of sunset with transition from highlight to shadow.

Further blocking in the background I realized I didn't want it becoming too blue and dark and transitioned it into more of an aqua near the bottom of the canvas.

I filled in the background around the hair, opting to use white to keep it light and impart an ethereal glow. I'm not overly fond of the result, as the hair comes across even less as if it were submerged and seems too disconnected.

I tackled the transition between the water and her shoulders by staying light, opting for a sort of frothy look. It didn't end up too well as the transition doesn't really unify the darker surrounding.

On the final pass I revisited the transition near the hair, making it lighter and somewhat frothy with lots of white. I also returned to the transition in the upper left corner and moved away from the smooth tones to a kind of cloudy cumulus effect, with the colour schemes opposing rather than blending gradually.

In the end I'm happy with the painting. It could be a lot better, but on the whole I'm not displeased with it. Capturing my work-in-progress didn't work out so well though. The terrible image quality, poor lighting, and inconsistent viewing angles are all things I would like to improve in recording future works-in-progress.