Almost !

It is raining steady rain showers, soon our water tanks will be full again. They were down to a bit under 20% capacity. Now already 2/3 or so full. We let the first rains wash the red dust from the icky dust squalls of last week off the roof and gutters before we connected the guttering back into the tanks. It's good, we need rain...we have had a couple days and expect another week of rain.

I have Almost finished the Paris Lion. He got a lot of light handed detail work today. I thought I could finish him today, but then at this stage in things I always think that. No, he needs another day of work. Real fine tuning, light embellishments on him and his statue platform and on his background too. But before stopping today I did paint in a wash of shadows on the background, which is a moody afternoon scene with dappled shade of late autumn (late November to be precise). Another thing I did was introduce some rust to the painting ! That was very exciting, because the Paris Lion has had a restrained palette of beiges and darker colors for the background and Verdigris colors plus dark shadows for the lion and his platform. It was nice to have a new color to introduce and it helped give the painting some additional dimension.

This lion has been done more yellow green verdigris than the Chicago Lion, which was very blue green...it is just the colors he wanted, I took my cues from his personality. The Paris Lion has suggested his colors too. Interestingly, he had previously suggested a deep teal for some of the shadows on his back and sides. It was a great idea, an exciting addition. Today he suggested some real limey green colors for his shadows. I gave it a go and really liked it, the yellow green warms up the shadows and is interesting to see. I toned it down a bit in places with some grey and raw umber. And one area needs a bit of knocking back tomorrow. And it looked great with the rust I touched in to some of the crevices of the lion's self and shadows. Painting in the rust stains on his platform was fun too. The rust stands out against verdigris. I love how it looks !

I also put in some white highlights where the sun shines on the statue. It seems like this is enough, but on reflecting from more distance or from the camera image, I need to do more. This was also the case with the Chicago Lion, but at the end I got the sunlight on him looking good. So more to do tomorrow !