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...  

Demo - Taman Ayun Temple, Bali

It's been ages since I did a full-sheet watercolour and I'd have to admit that I'm getting rusty at painting large-size watercolours.

Anyway, Singapore Watercolour Society (SWS) has been renting a room at Telok Kurau Studios, a Art Housing Scheme by Singapore's National Arts Council, as its official premises since the start of the project in 1997. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Telok Kurau Studios, the management committee of the studios will hold an art exhibition and invited three SWS members to represent the society in this event. As the society's Secretary-General, I was chosen as one of the society's representatives but I haven't got any recent painting for the show, so I painted this full-sheet watercolour over the past two days.

This is a photo I took nearly 3 years ago while holidaying in Bali.



Step 1 - Drawing the outline



Step 2 - Painting the first glaze.
I did the sky with Cerulean Blue and mixed a little Cobalt Blue and threw in some Ultramarine Violet to add more interest to the sky. The roof of the huts are painted mostly in Yellow Ochre with a little touch of Turqoise Blue and Translucent Orange. The Pagoda-like buildings in the background are painted in Sepia, Yellow Orche and Burnt Sienna, while the foliage is painted in Sap Green, Azo Yellow and Cerulean Blue. I also painted the ground with light washes of Yellow Orche and Burnt Sienna.



Step 3 - At this stage, I started to build up the values of the various structures by glazing darks over the shaded areas, paying attention to the light source. Colours used are essentially the same as the previous stage but using more pigments than water but making sure I maintain the fluidity of my paints so as not to turn the darks into mud.


Step 4 - Finally, I added the finishing touches to various things throughout the paintings by painting in the details and decided to darken the foliage on the left, soften the clouds in the sky, emphasized the shadows, painted the plants on the foreground and the two figures, etc.



Below are some close-up to show you parts of the painting in detail.




I used mostly Winsor & Newton, Rembrandt, Schmincke, Holbein - all artists grade watercolour paints. Paper used is my favourite Fabriano Artistico 300gsm Rough.

I hope you like this little demo that I've put together. I can see quite obviously that the painting s I do at home more detailed compared to my outdoor works as I have the comfort and time to sit down and paint slowly. This is painted over 2 days (or should I say late nights), approximately over 8 hours in total. I hope this is good enough for the show. :)

Critiques and comments are welcome as usual.

EDITED: I realized that the distant tree on the top left-hand corner was running almost parallel with the roof line. So I changed the tree a little to get more variations. Also, I felt that the foreground foliage was weak and decided to darken it and add a few stronger and bolder strokes to punch it up. It served to anchor the whole composition better that way.


Now, that's better... :)