A Glimpse of Sky - Progress

As requested by a few people, I will be posting progress scans of a painting I am working on. The finished pencil drawing:



I wanted to capture a dark feeling of constriction. I decided on a muted color scheme, with the only source of vibrant color being the sky above.



I started by filling in the background with a wash of payne's gray. The midtone of the vines is a mixture of davy's gray and just a little payne's gray.

Next, I pushed the background even darker, with a layer of ivory black, and then a very concentrated mixture of payne's gray and sepia.



Once that was dry, I went over with a glaze of davy's gray mixed with just a touch of raw umber. The background will have faint vines crossing over and tangling, so I wanted the background closest to the sky to have the color of the vines. For the falcon, I created a gradated wash of payne's gray and sepia from the bottom to the top to capture the contrast of bright light and extreme dark within the vine 'cave'. As seen on three of the vines, they will be a mixture of chromium oxide green and raw sienna.