Trompe Alhambra Day 48 – One Step Back, Two Steps Forward

I have been racking my brains to work out how to improve the patterned carvings on the big headers above the triple pillars. I haven’t been happy about how it’s turned out with the stencilling – it just doesn’t look real enough for me, just not 3D enough. But I haven’t been able to work out how to fix it – until today.

Unfortunately it means painting over the two large areas I spent several hours stencilling previously. Here is what the two header panels looked like today, before I took a deep breath and obliterated them:

I’ll show you why they had to go:

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While Kyla kept cutting some more stencils, I spent a fair bit of time today creating a few test panels to see if I could make it all much more 3D and realistic looking. Here are experiments A though to H. I was really happy with H (on the far right)

I had to wipe out what I’d already done in order to get the new version to work. I painted over all the previous stencils in the two areas.

I also spent a lot of time tweaking the tones, colours and more today. The areas around the bottom of the pillar where the calligraphy is going are a lot more finished.

Here’s how the day transpired: