I know I was worried that I sucked the life out of my painting by making the geese too real, yet I just couldn't resist my innate urge to make something life like. Call that platitude or whatever, that has been the bane of my endeavors in painting.
I decided to punch it up a bit by altering the contrast and definition of my geese feathers. I got that idea by playing with the "clarity" attribute in Windows photo editing app.
I thought of a way of re-defining the feathers on my goose. I used a small Chinese brush and loaded it with the tea/ink mixed color. Onto the surface of this loaded brush, I piled on some white gouache with another brush. Imagine a Klondike Ice Cream Bar, where the ice cream is coated with a thin layer of chocolate? This is the effect I was looking for; except tn my case, the brown color is on the inside, and the shell is white.
With the brush so loaded, I pressed firmly using the side-tip technique on to my goose. Thus each brown dab would be surrounded by an outline of white. By experimenting with the placement of such dabs, I was giving my feathers more realism; creating the pretense of blades of feathers.
At the same time I selectively applied pure white gouache to certain white areas, to accentuate the original white gradient.
Well that was fun for an afternoon.
