Background color and fine rendering over dark forms

Thanks Nadia and Nadia! Yes - horror vacui / horror of the void, even in the gold itself. You also see this as dots made with a pointed burnisher or as above actual designs drawn in the gold. Still working my way through that article, thanks for sharing!

here are some more examples of the kind of fine lines (here shown on gold from, the Miraj Nameh) : http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.arts.20120204.01.html these are white on gold (smoke on fire?) but i could also see white on blue.

Nadia, the cloud work is absolutely fantastic and that is exactly what i meant when i talked about fine lines and smoke traces. i love them!

Wow - I love the margins! And the greeny colours of the rocks!

Actually the clouds work well - THIS is a good way to mix opacity and translucency because clouds are naturally translucent, and you can layer them over opaque things too.

There are some beautiful rocks here too. The painting does look more promising now. It's like a sauce that you wanted to be a tomato sauce and were on the edge of overcooking but have at the last minute added more water and then pesto. So still keeping the tomatoes but now a new flavour which makes it richer. Look forward to seeing more!

A practical nugget to go forward with is: even when people do collage (ie mixing different photos from different eras etc) there still has to be something that coheres, and there will still be an element of uniformity across the whole thing. Does that make sense? Ie. don't mix too many styles and techniques in, even though you can mix media.

I have also literally run paintings under a tap to wash them off! This was with much thicker and well-prepared paper though, and it could take it.

If it were me, I would try this step - after having traced, transferred and inked in a new version of the painting - TWICE. So, one as a mi-rang, and one as an opaque version. In fact - you could stick to your original vision of the paler skin for mi-rang, and dark skin for opaque (since actually for opaque paintings skin can be either dark or light). And then the 3rd painting is the one you wash off. It will actually already look like a half mi-rang when it's dry, and then you can make this the ghost painting. See that is why I tend to work in series because I can never stop with all the ideas and just keep on expanding them, so, maybe just go with your own gut instinct!

What doesn't kill you, etc.

Once you've washed off one painting completely you will be immune to it anyway and just do it as a matter of course if it needs it (and slowly you won't need it as you'll understand more about painting 'as you get older'!). Like a mandala - it will feel cathartic and healing to wash it off and let it dry, and starch it again.

Can't believe I took that long to gently advise you to start again, again - you already said you wanted to ;-) so just do it, take that step, burn some incense, thank your angels and appease your genius loci and this painting - and the next few - and you yourself - will be better for it. I am sure.

There is a tipping point when the painting 'goes over' and is irretrievable - this particular painting doesn't look like it's there yet BUT it may be there in spirit. What I would do - and this is not advice - is just what I would do - I would think: I've done 2 miniature paintings in my whole life. 1 was brilliant and basically finished, and one was not. So, after an intense month of learning, to come up with 50% is, well, glass half full - 50% is so so so good! Cut your losses... and yes I would start again.

I think by darkening the flesh and darkening everything - which is a good idea - you have mixed up a few techniques in the same painting (eg. opaque sky and mi-rang rocks, which would be a difficult combination even for a master, which is why you rarely see it), and it feels like you want to pour all your ideas into this 1 painting. You don't - and it's hard, I know, I can see the struggle in this painting and actually I feel it's not your fault. It's not, because you are so excited about all the different techniques and possibilities that you have tried to use them all here! ;-)

I put 50+ layers on a oil painting once and it was just going so so so dark and went way past the chocolate-seizing-up point of no return and I just carried on and on, determinedly, until one day I had the brainwave that I could just... sand it down and start again. And the painting (which contained Prussian blue, a colour I'm now very careful with) (and my life) was much better for it. And the canvas retains traces of its former self, something that won't show up in photos but that you'll FEEL in real life. And it gives it gravitas and grace, like a veteran that's just come home from some righteous war (if that exists, probably not) (fighting aliens, ok).

Thank you so much for the thoughtful recs, Boston Nadia! I too at least like the colors of the rocks. I also think that I want to keep the dark skin, but perhaps leave it as a silhouette (without many facial features). All this said, as I'm about to write to Vaishali, I think that I'm going to start over on this piece. I've redone so many parts of it so many times, and each time doesn't even feel like progress, so it's time for a clean start. Your recommendations will be just as relevant for the reboot piece though. I wish I had a little creature who lives in my closet who just lives for staining, starching and burnishing paper for me though! Perhaps I will learn to appreciate these steps. :)

Yes, i have tried to do some dark angels, it is quite tricky for me to do dark skin tones as i'm not good with faces in the first place. When I was younger I painted everyone with yellow and gold skin to kind of even things out, but I think Vaishali's idea of pushing the medium further to make black and brown faces a bigger part of miniature paintings would be a good idea....could be an anti-racist painting workshop! I would certainly take it :) Anyhow @Nadia Bouhdili, I LOVE what you have done with the rocks here. I think you could use a very dark blue or a blue-black to render the rocks, and that would give then a lot of weight with eachother. for the opaque sky, maybe you could add very fine lines that would be almost like delicate smoke traces? I have seen it in some paintings with clouds, let me see if i can find 1 to share....

2) Fine lines over rocks - fine outlines are still needed, even though they are so fine you won't see them at a glance/at a distance, you'll still feel them. Fine lines for rendering - probably not necessary to do too much, but I would do a bit, just to harmonise and make the gradients and transitions a little smoother (not loads, as they are still rocky rocks). I would also delineate each rock shard as they seem to already be clearly delineated (you can see a gap between each rock shard, and the rendering can help to close these gaps - unless that is the look you are aiming for, a kind of stained-glass effect?)

You said to ignore face and clouds etc but hope you don't mind if stating the obvious (sometimes easily overlooked) - face and hands should match in skin tone, I know is a work in progress. Nice idea to paint truly dark skin, this is underrepresented in miniature painting... the Mughals did paint dark skin and Black skin but unfortunately not that well (in my opinion), they tend to look grey and ashy. I suppose depicting the 'essence'. Well, that is another discussion... in general I love seeing all races and all skin tones depicted in miniatures. Must do this myself, although haven't painted an actual real human figure in ages (prefer green demons, hehe!) All skin colours welcome... including green and blue! Makes me want to think deeper about skin tone in miniatures, as they are usually depicting ideal forms and essences and unfortunately the ideal was usually pale. @Nadia Madden mentioned that there are no instances of dark angels in miniatures, only pale ones... so a kind of 'painting prompt' right there! For me, I still live in an ideal world in my head but recent events compel me to do active anti-racist work, so perhaps this could be part of it - how to paint skin tones in miniature, and also the difference between realism and essences. For instance, I could mix up realistic colours in oil and also in water-based paint, but this would be a modern take on traditional miniatures... ok that's a different discussion!

I LOVE your green clouds!

And his hat!

...and I remember coming out of some of them feeling like I had to reconsider my whole being and life and art and everything... YOU DON'T. This is a good painting that with a few tweaks and fixes can be a great one.

1) Background colour - I think the colour is fine. The application is an opaque one - looks like you are able to do a nice opaque colour fill now! - Maybe what you're really asking is - does the opaqueness of the sky go well with the mi-rang half colour of the rocks? They are 2 different styles and traditionally generally not mixed. Hence my idea above to do 2 different paintings - same image but 2 paintings, but of course is up to you.

The colour is fine and actually looks a lot like the sky in original miniatures. I personally preferred it before... sounds harsher written down, doesn't it?! This new sky does go very well with the bright orange though, you are right.

I think the issue is that it is such a contrast between 50% of the painting being opaque (sky and clothes) and 50% being half colour (rocks). Before, it was just the figure and clothes that were opaque, and therefore more in keeping with miniatures we are used to seeing.

This is a great painting and just needs work and to be finished. I don't mean to sound harsh or overly critical online as written is different to spoken, and if I told you in person it would sound a lot softer and I would use loads of hand gestures, haha! Please call me out if tone is too harsh etc. I do want what's best for your work but I also know the path of an artist and how it is to receive criticism on something you've spent absolutely ages on. These are called 'tutorials' at the Slade, wonder what they are called in US art schools...

Wow it has changed! I can see you are doing a lot of washing off and restarting - that trait, that you are able to do it 'with equanimity' is a great great trait to have and you can't teach that, so well done. So you are able to do things again and start again and never give up... really well done. It's the opposite of laziness!

Having said that, I just have to also say that there is a limit to what the actual paper can take. You have not reached that limit, so don't worry about it. As a ball park figure, I would say 4-5 rewashings max before the paper begins to bobble. All depends on starch application and actual paper to begin with.

Another idea is to re-do the image - ie retrace the image onto a separate sheet of paper and then you get 2 images, going in 2 different directions in terms of colour or ideas you had... you don't have to put everything you have into 1 image. Do 90%. That will keep you painting new paintings forever. Don't say everything you want to say in 1 painting and don't aim to have the 1 perfect painting. Leave a 'hook'... ok I know this post wasn't asking for non-practical advice!