Nearing the Finish Line

I am now nearing the finish line on this my fifth and fnal painting for the Society of Animal Artists application.  It's been a long slog and there were plenty of times I had big doubts about this one, primarily thinking I had bit off more than I could chew with all those leaves.  But at this point I'm pretty happy about it.

Today I darkened the spaces in the background and glazed over some of the leaves to hopefully create more depth in the foliage.  I used dark green as well as maroon and dark brown as complements darken.  It also seemed important to add some foliage in the foreground and I wish I had thought of this in the beginning because at this point the pastel was pretty thick and my new additions didn't cover as well as I wish they had.  So here's a lesson hopefully learned - be sure there is a foreground, middle ground, and background and if there isn't have a good reason for it.

One plus about the foreground foliage is that it partially hides the tails and I was thinking that the curve in the right monkey's tail was a bit awkward.  It would have been hard to change that - so just cover it up!

Shelley suggested that I need more modelling in the monkies, so I did that, mostly with glazes.  And I added white hairs with a sharp Nupastel.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to deepen the pigment on the foreground leaves, including strengthening the value contrast in that area.