Spread Sunshine

Saule is a Lithuanian and Latvian bringer of light and sun starting on winter solstice.  Her sleigh was always shown as pulled by a horned reindeer.  She is one who had wept golden tears and those tears became amber pebbles that she throws out over the wintry skies as she rides.  Each pebble is a bit of sunshine.  She was also the spinning goddess whose spinning crated rays of sunshine that strobe through the winter skies. 

Saule ruled all parts of life, determining life, death and the well-being and regeneration of all.  She was the sun, riding every day in Her chariot across the sky. She also welcomed the souls of the recently departed into Her apple tree in the west.

In this painting, I begin with drawing a quick rough round face shape with triangles for what will be sun's rays.  I block in some color just to get started.  

Next, I begin getting some dark outlining and shadowing   I have a sense that, if I just let ugly be ugly fir a time, it will, eventually start to make artistic sense. 

Suddenly, Muse decides, because I am not taking credit for this, lol, that all should have a yellow under glow. Now things start to take on a totally different way than I thought at my beginning.  The positive of this is that I now have a sealer for the paper because I feel a sense of scrubbing going to happen as I begin the next layers.  I let this dry, totally, and naturally. ( I have found that drying with air, to hurry things, seems to do something to the plastic in acrylics.)  

Now I know my palette.  Doing any painting takes patience in layer after layer work.  (Why I needed a good sealing background color on my art journal page.)  Layers need to be thin and partially transparent.  I am using a soft bristle half-inch, oval brush to do circular brushing of color I am mixing from my palette.  

My palette holds Orange Spice, Berry Wine Bordeaux, and Whisper paint, and cadmium yellow colors.   I will only be using these for now.  I may need, of course, a darker one at the end for details.

Now I need to define the eyes, nose, mouth and cheeks.  I see I have not made the cheeks equal, so I use some of the berry and begin to fix that.  I would usually think I ruined things, but I press on.  I water down the berry mix on my palette a bit to soften up edges. 

NOTE:  The line around the top of the eye needs to curve down past the lower lid line at the outside corners.  This is the same for nostrils, and for top lip line.

Next, I begin to set down some face color again. Mixing Berry with the rest of the colors on my palette helped me redefine the face a bit more.

Watering down my brush and daubing my brushes on paper towel, I tend to have a glaze that starts to highlight the cheeks, chin and forehead.  Remember that the space up to the nose shadow needs to be light as well.  The shadow under and just on bottom ball of nose needs to be slightly darker.  I now leave the face and begin work on the sunshine halo.

Using Fine Artist Quality Bronze, I begin layering down color to redefine the cheeks, as well. 

 

Now I am going back to the face to add in some darks.  At this point I add a drop of black to my palette and I will mix it with Berry to get the deepest colors.  I used an eyeliner brush to get finer lines.  As well, I have added some gold triangles to get rays.

With a few touch-ups, smoothening, and some dots with Sharpie gold pen, I am at a place where I feel satisfied.  Meet my Saule.

Now to go spread some sunshine!

©Carol Desjarlais 1.3.20