WIP - Balinese Ceremony

I have noticed that usually there were many street scenes, landscapes and florals in most of the art exhibitions that I have taken part in, while portraits and figure paintings were less frequently represented, so for the upcoming SWS Annual Exhibition this November, I've decided to paint a figure painting, not one, not two, not ten... but at least 30? I've lost count.

This is a religious ceremony in Bali called "Odalan" where devotees were kneeling down to offer prayers to celebrate the anniversary of the temple. This is going to be the most challenging painting I have ever attempted not because I've ventured outside my comfort zone (street scenes and landscape) as I've done portrait and figures before, but because there are sooo many of them!

I just hope I have the patience to deal with all of them...

OK, here's the very detailed drawing which I spent almost 3 hours to complete...

Full sheet of Fabriano Artistico Rough Watercolour Paper 300gsm, stretched and stapled to a 20" x 29" strectching frame.

In landscape painting, I'll often start from the sky and work downwards, but for this painting, I decided to focus on the main subjects, ie. the devotees in the foreground. The Balinese are usually tanned, so their skin tones are painted with mixture of burnt sienna, transluscent orange, burnt umber and a touch of cerulean blue. An assortment of colours which include permanent rose, cerulean blue, ultramarine violet, yellow orche, etc. are used for their clothings. 

Here's a close-up shot of the figures...

After that, I added more details to the figures, and gave each of them some hairs on their heads... Ha! Ha!

Next, I painted the various buildings and structures around the scene. This is where I'm back to my comfort zone so I did it pretty quickly. If you're wondering what are those things in yellow, there are yellow-coloured cloths which were draped around the temple to celebrate the event. 

Then, I painted the sky and trees in the background, which were done quickly and loosely.

Next, I painted the ground with mixture of burnt sienna + cerulean blue + whatever dirty colours left inside my water con


Finally, I finished it off by painting the details, touched up some of the figures and adjusted some of the minor mistakes I found... did you notice that earlier on, there was a brown coloured stain on the middle of the paper? Instead of removing it, I added a pair of sandals to cover it... then, I added the shadows and highlights with a touch of white gouache.

Here's the finished painting.

I hope you'd enjoy my step-by-step work-in-progress...