Painting finally completed!!!

Posted on October 28, 2012 by nnnguy

It’s done!!! I wish I could say I painted it all on my own but alas, it’s was all Zoe’s brilliance and hard work which has gotten us to this point!!!! What a relief to finally get the painting done and I must admit, I’m a very happy man.
To start off with, here is a picture of my lounge room which I doubled as my workshop. One corner ceiling was converted to display my completed items. Just a little bit of motivation to keep me going every time I sat down to watch TV….. ……..I would plonk myself on the couch and call out “Zoe, you haven’t finished painting the lion” before proceeding to relax and watch TV while supervising Zoe =D Here is Zoe hard at work putting on the final touches
You can just make out the bottom of my little TV above her head. I took this picture, sitting on the couch. BEST Thanks to the guys on liondancing.org/forum for advising me on the use of varnish. I ended up with a Josonja’s Polyurethane water based gloss varnish and applied 3 coats to give the lion a heck of a glossy look.

And without further adieu, here are some of the photos

This is what the eyes ended up looking like. A combination of the previous two eyes we had earlier.

And …………………………. here he is!!!
BEHOLD!!!

And the lovely Zoe with our painted lion head.
Picasso in the making.

Hope you like the look of it so far

More painting

Posted on October 21, 2012 by nnnguy

Progress pictures.
Top view of the lion showing a bit more of the detailing. Still not completed yet though but we’re making good progress. This bit is probably my favourite part of the lion. I love the colours and the lines.

Back and top view with ears included.

Close up of back. We’ve added some little flame things

Some minor detailing on the green bit above the top lip

Progress on the painting

Posted on October 18, 2012 by nnnguy

The base colour is finally painted on cleanly and neatly… minus the eyes .
We’ve also started on the finer detailing.

Check out the blending. Zoe got it down to a master stroke

She’s still working on the eyes!!
We also found a tub of silver paint in the mix of sample pots we had and painted where the mirror will be

Stay tuned. I’m almost at the finish line.

painting progress

Posted on October 15, 2012 by nnnguy

More colours go on and the lion is starting to take on some life.

I should note that the painting was a bit all over the place. Zoe got excited and started going ahead painting the details in before she got the base colours right. There’s a few bits which you can see which look quite messy, where she’s painted over sections roughly in prepartion to fix it up afterwards.

Note along the cheek, zoe had initially painted in the black spikes but painted over it to get the base blue colour right

By this stage, Zoe had decided that she would put the detailing in a bit later and get the colours right so you’ll see certain sections like the black swirls around the nose and the spikes along the top lip with unclean lines.

We had to improvise for the bit on the side of the eye. We ended up with a simple stripe pattern.
Front shot with cleaner lines.

Step 22 and so the painting begins

Posted on October 9, 2012 by nnnguy

I thought I’d use this post to thank my girlfriend Zoe for volunteering to do the painting.
It’s probably better that she does it because she’s much more of a perfectionist so I know that the lion will come out much better than anything I could have produced.
My little contribution was to sketch on the lion all the patterns and to explain to her what needs to be painted what colours and to orientate her to the various screenshots I have taken. My other little contribution was to paint the ears so I can say that at least I painted a part of the lion myself =D

Check it out
This was my contribution with the painting. I suspect Zoe will repaint it. She thinks I did a rushed job and my lines aren’t clean enough.
And now back to Zoe’s painting
The left and right eyes are different. She was experimenting with shading and blends

Zoe thought it would be cool to have an aqua nose.
I got her to change it back to green.

Keep your eyes peeled for more to come

Step 20 part 2- sketching the design

Posted on October 8, 2012 by nnnguy

Ok, so managing to get screenshots of lion head is one thing, translating that into clean lines and a design with definite colours is another.
I managed to work out a fair bit of the design but I had to make up certain bits.
I’m glad that this lion had bristle fur so that I could appreciate the painting.

My sketches on paper
Sketches on the lion

Progress report .. from then til now 18 months later. Here’s a snapshot

Posted on October 7, 2012 by nnnguy

Before I start posting up pictures of the painting process, I thought I’d post a couple of pictures from whence I started to where I am now. So far, it has probably taken me about 18 months of slow, tedious, painstakingly boring work, with many breaks in between followed by very short periods of inspiration and a bit of an ass kicking by my girlfriend to get the job done.