Ultimate fighter VIII final... trying to deepen my understanding of refraction and movement!

With this final pass, it suddenly dawned on me that refraction is much easier to achieve on primed canvas than on raw canvas...

Achieving refraction from one layer to the other depends on everything (paint and medium) not sinking in the fabric. Needless to say, I will need to readjust my methods slightly with raw canvas.

My mission statement stipulates that my aim as an artist is to depict beauty, power and movement using the human form as a basis for expression. At the early stage, 4 years ago, I was attracted by the depiction of female beauty. This year, I really wanted to emphasize power (static power?)... perhaps some sort of an ego trip on my part! With my recent experiments on refraction, I see for the first time an opportunity to depict movement. On thing is for sure, going from raw canvas to primed canvas is like shedding 100 pounds... my paint velocity has dramatically increased!

Update: This is the stretched version below. Ironically, I find the buckled version more interesting... also, from a distance, the first step version had qualities that this one lost along the way... and this is giving me food for thought in terms of future paint application...

Note to self: " I seem to have gobbled up a fair number of styles and methods over the last 4 years... question is: is this finally THE avenue for me? This prospect excites me... at least for now!"

Sub note to self: "Transparency has remained the common thread in my work.... and the one pass painting has never been so close... just like doing watercolors!"