"Sacred Coil" design, composition and execution

This step-by-step walkthrough covers the design and execution of my acrylic painting "Sacred Coil". Although I haven’t received any art training, tutorials written by amateurs can still provide insight into how others work. This isn’t strictly a "how-to" guide, and rather explains my design process. I hope you find it interesting.

Step 1: Concept, design, composition
I cut a piece of acid-free matboard to 20" x 32" inches, giving a slightly panoramic format. I then sketched many possible compositions, filling a dozen sheets of scrap paper with little thumbnail drawings of settings and character poses.
Next, I set up a photo shoot of various props as close to my preferred composition as I could get. I wanted a luxurious setting, so included rich fabric (the skirt of an evening dress) and candles. The candles were arranged to link the main characters and keep the viewer’s eye in the picture.
Beads and coins doubled as treasure, and other trinkets acted as treasure chests, a throne and a crystal ball. It’s helpful to have junk around the house like this- even really tacky objects can be useful.
I took a couple of dozen photos with varying angles and lighting arrangements. An overhead angle looked dramatic, but I wanted the picture to be more intimate to immerse the viewer in the artwork. A viewpoint closer to the lizard’s eye level would accomplish this. The photo below shows the second complete backdrop I created, after the first turned out too cluttered.
I printed the photo in greyscale for reference while I sketched my background on a 32" x 20" sheet of paper.

Step 2: Sketching the lizards
Here’s one of my reference photos. I couldn’t resist taking a whole bunch of snaps of this cute pair!
I exaggerated Pocomoco’s (the big lizard’s) proportions to better personify his gestures, lengthening his limbs and shortening his body. I wanted to make his belly visible a bit, as Nova would have her back to the viewer and I didn’t want to just show the backs of both lizards. I had a choice: draw him sitting in a throne, or reclining across the steps. I chose the latter, because if he was sitting, he’d be too remote, stuck at the top of the picture. Having him coming down the stairs connects him with Nova (the dragon lizard). Additionally, the curve of Pocomoco’s body echoes the curve of the backdrop.

Step 3: Finalising the design
I added a couple of gecko servants and elaborated on the background with curling rocks, snail motifs and treasure.
Since the red fabric had lots of tonal contrast, it would easily attract attention. To ensure the lizards remained the star players, I intended to introduce some green lighting on them from Pocomoco’s sceptre (green being opposite to red on the colour wheel), and Pocomoco’s shiny bling would also help him pop out. I looked at the final design in a mirror, as well as upside-down, to check for compositional errors. When satisfied, I transferred the design to my painting surface using carbon paper.

Step 4: The fun starts!
This is a complicated image so I restricted my palette to keep things unified. I placed all the acrylic colours I intended to use next to my palette, and resisted the temptation to add to them later on. I used: (Matisse brand, "Structure" range) Titanium white, Payne’s grey, Yellow mid (azo), Skin tone deep, Skin tone mid, Unbleached titanium, Raw umber; and (Atelier brand, "Interactive" range) Burnt umber, Cadmium red (mid), Pacific blue and Cadmium yellow (light).
Most of my paints are Matisse brand (an Australian company), but I’m adding more Atelier Interactive paints to my palette as they apparently have a longer blending time than conventional acrylic. This may be handy when painting large uniform areas such as clear skies. However, I have no preferred brand and merely recommend using artist’s quality rather than student quality paint. I currently use Matisse, Atelier, and Winsor and Newton paints, which are all excellent quality, but there are many comparable brands which are just as good.
Brushes used: size 7, 4, 2, 0 and 00 sable or sable/ synthetic mix brushes.
Firstly, I indicated the main dark areas over the image using Burnt umber, and roughed in the most distant areas with Pacific blue.

Step 5: Establishing main colours
I found this picture quite confusing to look at. When painting I invariably have no idea what to do next, and this is generally exacerbated as the complexity of the artwork increases. Sacred Coil was no exception, and I thought a good way to make things easier to see would be to paint in the main areas of colour- the red swathe of fabric, and the browns and blues of the background. I also took this opportunity to darken many shadows and further establish light sources.

Step 6: What happens when you move house and don’t have a digital camera for a couple of months
I apologise for the large progress gap between the previous image and the one below.
The key to avoid boredom and frustration, I find, is to keep moving around the image. At one stage, I was satisfied with the bottom third of the work and considered it virtually complete, so transferred my attention to the fabric. After spending about 10 hours one weekend painting it, I noticed the bottom third of the work looked terrible compared to my carefully-painted fabric. I then spent the next couple of weeks re-painting this area.
I painted most of this picture under artificial light, each evening after work. I don’t recommend this, but you have to make the most of available art-making opportunities! If you also work full-time, double-check tones and colours on weekends in natural light during the middle of the day.
A lot of this was painted using very dry brushes, and I used my fingers to smudge and blend colours, then added glazes on top of opaque layers to enhance the hazy atmosphere.

Step 7: Lizards and candles
The lizards were painted using the same colours used for the rest of the painting. The only addition was some Cadmium Yellow on the lizards and candles, added to bring them into focus a bit more. However this colour was used sparingly to avoid jarring with the rest of the work.
The arrangement of Nova’s tail was changed to give it a more dramatic flourish (compare with the previous image).
At this stage I considered re-working some of the background to bring it more into focus. I’m glad I resisted the urge because my artworks often suffer from everything having the same sharpness. With Sacred Coil I avoided this to some extent- there are lost and found edges throughout, and some objects are blurrier than others.
I also completed the candles and the ground Nova was standing on at this stage. A few final adjustments here and there (brightening some parts to bring them forward, and dulling other parts that were distracting from the main subject), and I was finished. Click on the image below to view it at a larger size.

All content copyright Donna Quinn.