Tea Merchant (again)

So I finished up this painting a couple days ago. In keeping with my current efforts to 'not over-work' a painting, I varied my technique just a little and tried to paint thinner than I have been in recent years. I used to paint much thinner several years ago, but somewhere along the way I slipped into painting somewhat thickly which is more time-consuming, but not really more effective. I was only partially successful with this little experiment. . .

I started with a light monochromatic watercolor under-painting to place shadows and such. Then I slapped down the sky in messy watercolor. The background in this painting was really an after-thought and I'm aware it's a bit lacking in many regards, but since it's just a personal experiment, I didn't want to put a whole lot of time into it. I then switched back to my usual acrylics to paint most everything.

I was doing pretty well keeping the paint thin until I started working on the bird character. I quickly fell back into my habit of starting really dark and having to work up to the lights - not that this is an inherently bad method, but I think it does take longer and sometimes makes the painting too dark/heavy. On the original, I think the bird-guy looks a bit too dark for the rest of the scene, but it's okay since this one is just for me.

The background bushes and grass were actually really fun to paint. The paint's not all that thick and it went really fast. It's a bit more earthy, but I think it's on par with my usual time-consuming, thickly painted backgrounds. I'm going to try to carry these efforts forward in future paintings....

Thanks for stopping by!