Yes! My big painting is finished. I'll keep its image a secret for now. More importantly are the lessons learned...
1. Transparent azo yellow is very strong and very transparent. For glazing over light colours to use as a yellow is rarely advisable. I used this on a study but it was too "electric" and the cadmium I used on the actual painting was much better. I've had good results with the yellow over darker earth reds, and too with viridian to make excellent yellow greens. It's too transparent to model with on it's own though, and with white is no better than cadmium.
2. Large plain flat areas are fine on small paintings but on big ones can appear tedious.
3. Gold paint can look as good as gold leaf, but only in tiny sections because it dries very quickly and can become blobby. Gold leaf, with all it's difficulties, looks better when gold is needed.
4. Venetian red is the ultimate earth red. It's a colour that I love each time I use, and on this picture I used only venetian red, "naples yellow" deep (that is PBr24), cobalt turquoise light and black and white for underpainting which covered enough of the spectrum for any final colour (violets are the only notable problem, and remain so given the very long drying time of my Old Holland Dioxazine... my new plan for that is to mix with an earth during underpainting and glaze with ultramarine violet which is practically the same shade but very weak in power by comparison).
Olé!
