Last Steps and the Finished Product

Trivia question of the day:  How many spokes are there on a unicycle wheel?  Answer:  Thirty-six.  Thirty six very straight and surprisingly unpatterned torturous black spokes.  To get them just right, I chose not to freehand them.  I placed a piece of tracing paper over the painting and outlined the wheel and pedals, took that back to my desk and drew in the spokes with the aid of a ruler.  Then I placed it back over the painting with a piece of transfer paper in between and traced over the spokes to transfer the drawn lines onto the painting.  I still had to actually paint all those straight lines in, which I did with the aid of a beer and a lot of breath holding.  

I then went back over everything one last time.  I added another layer of paint to the background to enhance the colors and actually decrease the amount of brush stroke detail.  I added a touch more color to the skin tones.  And I reworked the hairline a little to try to reduce the look of premature male-pattern baldness that my daughter pointed out (thank you, Jamie).

And that's it.  The only thing left to add is the signature :-)

Thanks for joining me!