My second Native American Dancer is complete. I don’t have a title for this work yet, as I want to find out the dancer’s name and tribe affiliation. This was a challenging work because of the size (36″ X 48″), and the amount of detail involved. I took the original photo and removed the unwanted background clutter of people, tents, and sound systems on my Photoshop Elements program. I cloned the grass over these items so the focus would be on the dancer.
I worked from two 8 X 10 photos and enlargements of some details like the bead work, hands and moccasins to get it right. A lot of thought went into the layout, color selection and the order of attack to build the dancer from the background to the front. I layered all of the details one on top of another. I went with a typical New England forested background with a grassy field. I will be adding a series of progress photos on my “Painting Progress” page in a couple of weeks. I tracked the hours it took to do this work, and ended up with a total of 87 hours! A fun painting to do.
Fine Art by Don Whittemore 