At the end of my last article on my floral portrait painting, both the flower headdress and the portrait were fully in place. I had also added some shades of blue and violet to some of the areas still left with burnt sienna. In this final session I'll bring the painting to a conclusion by adding a vibrant, colourful background, as well as retouching the portrait.
When I think about creative ways of developing a background, what works really well for me is what I refer to as a 'treblelayer' method. This is working with three subsequent layers that interplay with each other as more paint is added on. Colourwise, layers can be chromatically close, or complementary, or a combination of both. Often thin washes(first layers) to synthetic flat brushes (second layers) to large artist-specific spatulas for the final layers that allow me to slide over the layers underneath.
