Red Tara process...

I thought it about time to update the blog, keep it alive, even though it seems I'm using social media more and more to publish my work. I'll get this thing going again with a look at my process concerning a triptych commission based on Red Tara, a deity from Buddhist mythology. I spent over a week playing about in my sketchbooks, toying with ideas, concepts, compositions, etc. The usual process I follow, but especially for a fairly ambitious and complex commission like this. The biggest challenge was how I was going to reconcile the third panel with the others, as the idea of combining a futuristic cyber-punk type scene with more mythological and traditional elements was a daunting task. They needed to stand alone yet at the same time have a sense of flow, of shared themes and an aesthetic harmony. I had a fairly strong idea early on how I wanted to handle the first two panels, but I had to re-work the final one a few times. I got there in the end I think, although it only fully satisfied that sense of lingering doubt after I decided to imbue each panel with a certain time of the day; the first panel representing early morning, the middle panel the zenith of the day, and the third panel night. That gave it a stronger narrative structure that I felt I could more cheerfully work with. With regards the palette, the first panel is a combination of Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Green, which I'd never used before. I used the same combination for the kimono of Red Tara (the same friend by the way who posed for The Malignant Flower painting), which needed that intensity and high value. The third panel is largely a complementary pairing of orange and blue, for the most part anyway. I stretched the canvas for all of them myself, which has a satisfyingly organic feel to the whole process, plus it means I can dictate the size of them myself. A challenging commission all in all, but the journey starts again with the next project.