Parfum

Patrick Susskind's disturbing novel was probably in the back of my mind when I started this painting back in October last year.  I put it aside as other projects took priority, but it's back on track, with only the reflections to assess and paint.

The first picture is pretty well as I left it in October. Hard pastels only to that point.

Image 2 is showing some detail in hard pastels on the lettering; the bottles have been repainted in soft pastels. And the background is being tentatively blocked in.

In the third photo the background colours have been determined. There are greys from Rembrandt in the top right corner, proceeding to the left on dark blue and dark green from Sennelier. The bottom half is Sennelier's dark green (177 again) and also black - an interesting black; I tried black from Rembrandt and from Roché, but Sennelier's seems warmer. By the way, the Hypnose bottle has two white brands in the big white patches - the upper one is Sennelier,  a very soft, creamy pastel. The lower corner is from Roché; I found this much more grainy in texture than the Sennelier, and more controllable. The little red bottle has Rembrandt's Mars Violet as its dark centre.