Part 3 of this video series will give you an idea of a few more stages the painting went through as I lose myself in the finishing touches and final details.

Towards the end, I lost all sense of time. It's often what happens when the right side of the brain takes over. You know that feeling when listening to music and an hour goes by and dinner should have been started an hour or two ago ... or you're driving home along an all too familiar route and the next thing you know it you're putting your keys in the front door and can't remember if you locked the car door and remember you'd meant to stop at the grocery store. Things are over before you realize it and you don't really remember getting there. Of course, you were paying attention to what was right in front of you, it wasn't as though you were a danger to yourself or others ... you just weren't connected to what was happening in your periphery. And that's what happened once I got to a certain point of the painting. I think it started when I finally began the shoe laces. Tackling them wasn't something I was looking forward too because I knew I had one shot at getting them right (if I didn't want to have to pull out the acrylics - my opaque water-based paints).

Things went well though and the painting was done before I knew it.

Without thinking, I'd flung the camera aside to get my nose right down next to the paper.

You might have seen my crinkled nose and tongue stuck out about half an inch, held in with clenched teeth as I held my breath ... whipped my right wrist down and around and out with a paper hit of an S-shaped flick ... and then again in a flipped bit of backwards S-strokes ... then two fairly confident smaller horizontal S's on the background boot as I slowly let my breath out ... grabbed a damp crumpled tissue ... pounced it back and forth over the blue sky ... pulling just the right amount of pigment back ... making a few more clouds before I went back in with a smaller brush with thinned down near black gouache to clean up places on the laces where the colour had skipped over the surface earlier.

I was pleased to see someone comment on FaceBook that the boots had character. I took it to mean I'd gotten the calligraphy of the shoelaces right with a bit of witchy-twitching on the backs of the boots.

Then, getting one grommet right and keeping the same rhythm going to get the rest properly sized and lined up was one of the last challenges.

And tidying up those final blades of grass, so they didn't clump together like a hastily combed hairdo. When I began scanning over the last areas in need of a touch up, I realized I'd lost all thoughts of videoing what I'd been doing. WhoOpsie.

I plan on doing some miniature work in gouache later in the year and will make sure I video as I detail all parts of the painting process so you can see what I'm doing in real life.

Hopefully, though, this does provide you with a satisfying enough overview of the final stages of this painting.

It's not a large piece at 5"x7"

Before signing it, I ran it by my brother, Gary. He agreed that the back boot felt like it was about to take off. I'd already sealed the painting with Jacquard Dlorlands Wax, a protective sealant used for gouache, and so I couldn't fix it with gouache. I spotted a sharp ultramarine blue Prismacolor pencil in my kit and used it to ground both boots with cross-hatching in a couple of cool shadows ... then used the pencil to sign my name.

 Here's the Video!

Let me know if you've used watercolour or gouache before. It's not the easiest painting in my opinion.

And here is a link to the 3rd NewsLetter Landing Page. 

What do you think?