W.A.S.P Portrait Update

So I was not able to finish the painting of the Women's Airforce Service Pilot (W.A.S.P) in time for the airshow, but I took it anyway. The really exciting thing was that my table at the Airshow was actually right NEXT to two actually WASPs, and was able to show them the painting as it was, unfinished. They couldn't see very well and their hearing was going pretty bad, but they were very honored and appreciative of my sentiments. They signed pictures for many people that came up to the tent, which gave me a little bit of traffic as well.

Since I haven't finished the painting yet, I thought I'd share a couple of process shots to keep everybody interested in what I'm doing and show a little bit of a step-by-step.

So since you've already seen the digital composite, you've got a basic idea of what the finished image will be like. I washed over the drawing with a very diluted burnt umber to just get a whole quick layer over the bare canvas with the drawing over it.



From there I used a rub technique to pull out some highlights, and then went in again with the burnt umber to lay in my darker values and start giving the painting some shape. This is called the underpainting. It allows me to show my basic value and creates a unified base for the rest of the paint to sit on top of.



Now that I have my underpainting down, I can start mixing my palette and getting some color in there. It's important for me to start with the background so that I'm essentially painting in layers from background to foreground. I start with the sky and then work my way down the airplane, which is a Fairchild PT-19. The PT-19 was the plane that the army used to train its pilots during WWII.



The final stage will be, of course to render the girl, and then last but most important, the Fifi logo on her jacket, which is the emblem created by Walt Disney that the WASPs used.

More to come!