White knuckles time

So here's the latest masterpiece. Kidding ;)

This is actually the first finished human figure I have done in the medium. So I guess it could be one of those famous firsts.

For this piece I worked from a piece done by a Chinese artist in the 40's or 50's. I fear I made things to hard on myself. First, I pulled a bit of a Rodin by removing the backscratcher the girl was originally holding. This created sort of a fill-in-the-blank problem that I don't think I handled as well as I would have liked.

I also made things harder by insisting on leading with dark ink first. Doing the outine (right) was fine, but when it came time to work shading, starting dark was definitely hard.

This is the way masters work. I am not one of those, so I spent the rest of the painting on the verge of losing all control. It was a real white knuckles ride for me right up to the finish and I really thought I might lose it ^^

Nevertheless, I am shamelessly pleased with the end result. I think the water element is particularly strong in this piece, and the sense of reflection through some passages really reminds one of living flesh.