The Part I Can't Explain

This is where The Zone comes in.  The Zone is the mysterious mental place that an artist enters into, where time and external distractions just seem to fade away.  If you watched the show "Heroes," it's where Isaac Mendez went when he painted the future.  It's very hard to explain what I do at this point, except that I just start mixing, blending and adding color.  I paint an entire layer (or more) over the area I want to add color and detail to, and I just keep working it until I get it right.  

Books on painting will always talk about "organizing your palette" and carefully arranging the colors.  That doesn't work with Zone painting.  Mine looks something more like this:

Here's what it looks like with all of the flesh tones worked at least once.  The clothing and some of the unicycle have also received a coating of color.

I had originally thought I would leave the lower background as it was, but decided it needed more work. Here you see the main color layer for the entire painting.  What's left?  Not much.  After this dries, I'll add in the unicycle spokes and go back over the entire thing to accent highlights, augment color and work on any detail that needs perfecting.  Next post:  The Finished Painting.