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...  

Art Restoration of A Different Kind

A couple of months ago, Robin showed me a photograph of headless statues that he had taken some time ago. These are actually statues of Buddha painstakingly carved out from rock formation. Sadly, treasure hunters had other ideas. They chopped off the heads and probably sold them as antiques to feed their own greed and bulging bank accounts.


Robin asked if I could do a painting of the statues with Buddha's heads intact. Well, I usually don't like to paint something that I've never seen, or somewhere I've never been to... and trying to put back Buddha's heads could be a little difficult. Not someone who would shy away from a challenge, I agreed.

Although Robin did sent me a couple of pictures of Buddha for my reference, I needed to do some more research and thanks to Google! Image, I managed to find tons of pictures and chose a few for my reference.

That was nearly 2 month ago as I've been busy with work, baby and the exhibition (not necessary in that order) and only had time to paint it over the past two days. Better late than never, right? :) Here are step-by-step progress pictures...

1. The Drawing
A rough sketch of the painting... but with enough details to mark where everything is.

2. The First Wash
Some called it First Glaze, Underpaint, Mother Wash... whatever... it serves the same purpose, ie. to lay the colour foundation for the rest of the painting. Here, I used 4 colours to lay the first wash - Cadmium Orange, Yellow Ochre, New Gamboge and Cerulean Blue, and painted them wet-into-wet.



3. Defining The Darks
When the wash has completely dried, I started to define the shapes of the statues and other structures with dark colours - a variety of Arizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue and Sepia.



4. Shaping With Mid-Tone Colours
I carried on to build the shapes with mid-tone colours and at this stage, my brushstrokes were very loose and splashy, just enough to make a representation of the structure as a whole.



5. The Finishing Touch
I added darks on the shaded areas and to make it looked more realistic, I further enhanced the shapes and curves of the statues, this time using a smaller brush so that I can reach the smaller areas. I also made sure the whole composition in terms of colours, tonal values were balanced.... and last but not least, to add more texture on the rock surface, I splattered some leftover paints with a toothbrush and signed it!



This is painted on Fabriano Artistico (Half sheet 14" x 21") using W&N, Rembrandt and M.Graham artist watercolour paints. It took me two nights to draw and paint it, about six hours in total.

So, what do you call this? Art restoration of a different kind? I hope Robin will come and give us more info about the statues and its location.

Hope you like it. Critiques and comments welcome as usual.

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UPDATE

Robin e-mailed and informed me that his friend, an expert in antiques and Buddhist statues commented that the two statues besides Buddha could be further improved by adding thier head-dresses.

"The middle buddha (amitahba) needs no change. Both Kuan Yin and Da Shi Zhi has similiar head dress.. In fact in the sutra, both of them look alike and similiar, with one standing left and the other right."

Therefore, to depict the stautes more accurately, I've made some changes by adding the head-dress. Here's the updated version...