This painting Waiting in the Wings was inspired by my jaunts to Cat Street Market off of Hollywood Road, near Man Mo Temple in Hong Kong. A few of the vendors there sell Chinese Opera marionette puppets. Like the embroidered slippers, I was immediately attracted to them for the variety of color, pattern and personality!
I was happy with this painting when I did it. After recently getting it out and living with it a while again. I decided to do some tweaking. I felt the background was too much the same value as the rest of the painting and wanted to make the puppets stand out more. I also played around with more value changes on the puppets themselves as well assome lost and found edges. With a stencil I created a slight vertical striation very subtly in the background to represent the puppet strings without being to literal.
Waiting in the Wings before tweaking
I’m happy with the tweaks. A painting I thought was finished has a new lease on life! The title has become even more appropriate. :-)
