Hottest day of this third heatwave of the year. A full day working (appropriately) on 'Punishment Of The Sun'. The drawing took most of yesterday and today, completed by 15:00. I had thought about merging the figure into the desert floor like the Untouchable Strawberry painting, but it looked rather good without this. I added a few elements from the original plan; a hand shaped tree-structure and the sun itself with rays reminiscent of a radiation symbol. I changed the woman's arm into a green caterpillar, also part of the original plan, but left it suspended vertically as in the Cabanel painting, this seemed to benefit the composition in many ways, mirroring the hand tree, and aiding the dry tree on the left. That dry tree and the dried flowers on the desert floor were additions by the AI, both good ones.
I toned the canvas with yellow oxide to prepare it, and have started the first tracing stage using a sheet of Polydraw and a pencil, pencil so that I can rub away the lines to re-use the sheet of this expensive plastic. This one piece might be five to ten pounds worth. The canvas piece ten to fifteen, the MDF ten. These larger works cost more by every metric, and this one isn't huge, a mere 60x86cm, about the same size as 'Triumph Of The Mechanauts'.
