Killer on the Road: Part Five

It's been a while but I've finally finished. In part four we stopped after the fence was put in and let the paint dry.

I still hadn't finalized the figure so I spent some time drawing different people until I came up with the right idea. You can see my cut out drawing taped to the right easel leg below the painting. With something like this I'll draw to any scale I like and then scan and adjust the size on the computer, and then print it out.

After I have it cut out I'll lightly tape it to the paint surface and trace around it with a pencil. I've used other methods for transferring a drawing to a painting but this one is the easiest so far.

Then I remove the cut out and draw in a few of the missing details. Now it's time to mix paint. In my sketch the figure was all one color and I thought about making him all black like a silhouette, but since he was carrying a bag, which would be hard to distinguish in silhouette, I decided to add a little color but kept it dark.

After the figure was done I stepped back to get an overall look. The figure looked like he was floating on top of the road, so I added a shadow by taking a small flat brush and putting a little gray paint on it but then wiping most of it off. This helped make the shadow look like part of the ground and not a flat shape floating above it.

At this point I always have a short battle with myself whether to add my crosshatching or not. I really like how it looks and put it in most of my paintings but I hesitate because I wonder what other people will think of it. I wonder if people will think it's supposed to be some sort of religious thing, even though that is definitely not what it means to me. But since it's my painting I push through the controversy in my head and paint them anyway.

To paint the crosses I thinned down some white paint with Liquin and paint thinner to a soup-like consistency. Then I load up my liner brush and use short vertical and horizontal strokes to crosshatch behind the buildings.

There's only one thing left and that's to add my signature. I wipe off my liner and dip it into the black that I used for the figure coat and paint my signature in the left hand corner. And that's it, the painting's done!