The History of the Kingdom of The West
Scrolls

Completed Mountains

Photo and Contribution
by Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

Completed Mountains
The "white" part of the mountains was worked with a mixture of Permanent White with a bit of Payne's Gray added for the very darkest areas, then lightened up and Spectrum Violet added in the lightest areas. None of the "white" on the mountains is actually white; it's a very light, warm violet color; this is more obvious down below the moutains where the bottom part of the landscape is partially painted in this photo. A few places where the light is most intense were highlighted with pure Permanent White.

The "rock and trees" part of the mountain was painted in with straight Payne's Gray below, slightly lightened in areas where the treeline thinned out and the trees and rocks were sparser. The effect of trees was made by dabbing dark paint with the tip of a #1 bright brush over the lighter areas. I had painted in almost all of the mountains when the realization came that some of it was going to be covered by the trees at the edges.

Quick time out to spend a lot of time looking at Alaskan trees. Three trees were drawn in silhouette onto the original piece of tracing paper, then transferred onto the painting with white colored pencil. The outlines of those trees may just be seen in this image. Once the trees were drawn in, work resumed but now those places to be covered by the trees were left alone.

After the mountains were finished, the tres were painted in with straight Mars Black. Almost immediately two problems developed. One -- it needed more than three trees, there was just too much blank light-colroed spaced at the bottom of the piece. Two -- as more trees were painted in and the paint started drying on the earlier trees, white started breaking up through the black paint. The Mars Black paint was not sticking well to the other layers of paint -- for some reason, the Permanent White appeared to boil up through the black, especially where the black paint pooled. Out came the hair dryer and once the paint had dried, those spots were painted over again with more black. The white "boils" came right back -- defintiely the black paint wasn't adhering properly. To fix this, I used a technique I learned in some art class long ages ago where we made wax resists using crayon covered up with india ink; the ink is then scratched away with a pen nib or other sharp object and the lines made this way shine with the colors beneath. The ink didn't want to stick to the waxy crayon so to persuade it to do so, a few drops of liquid dishwashing soap was stirred gently into the ink. The same trick worked with the gouache -- a dab of soap, gently stirred (else lots of bubbles form), and the paint behaved properly. Whew -- saved!

The last step was to add the constellations to the night sky in dabs of pure Permanent White. A check of the Anchorage skies on the night of July 20th, 1987 via the www.heavens_above.com web site showed the pattern in the sky and these was painted in. And yes, I know the sky was only dark for probably just an hour that mid-summer night, and the mountains would not have had as much snow on them, and the lake would not be frozen over, but allow me some artistic license. -- Tatiana Nikolaevna Tumanova

The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).