Alright, well, I gave the dwarf his first oil coat . . . I have to be careful to wipe away as little as possible of the pencil beneath. Basically I just paint with a lot of medium and some white, letting the pencil tint the mixture as I carefully go over the drawing.  Occasionally you’ll lose some tonal work, but it’s easily replaced on the next layer as long as you don’t lose anything too important like facial features.

Obviously I can’t scan a wet canvas, so we’re back to the fool camera.

dwarffirstcoat

When that coat dries, I’ll go in with black and block in the tones correctly, deepen the shadows, and sharpen up some edges.

I also carefully applied the beginnings of a tattoo to the other painting with the intention of wiping it away if it didn’t look good.  It works for me though, so I’ll leave those basic lines and build a more complicated tattoo around them.

Still haven’t decided if the Maryland flag will go on the shoulder or not.  (I took the photo at an angle to prevent the flash from bouncing off it too badly.)

paintingwithtattoostarting

The flash is still washing it out a bit though.  (It’s a lot darker than what it looks like above.)  The top band is a little too dark and will have to be lightened.