This is the beginning to my Polysaccharides painting. Before I even started this painting, I figured out how and what I was going to paint. This method is crucial to saving time and money. My vision was to create a painting that showed depth and displayed a scene as if you were looking through layers of cells in some ones body. I always take out a piece of paper and figure out the general scene of what my painting will look like in the future. The second thing to figure out what colors you think would work best with your fine-art painting. Since the background will have a small percentage of the total surface area of the painting. I decided that I wanted to work from a Dark and recede back into a light. This way the background will be highlighted more. This also makes the light source appear as if it were far away from the viewer illuminating the background. It also makes you stare at the very last layer making your eyes wonder through the first layers. This creates a trance like effect for the viewer.

I started with a dark blue/purple with a little black. I could have simply lightened this color as the layers receded but, I felt this would not keep the viewers attention and it would ultimately make the painting boring. This led me to the idea of changing not only the value of the color, but also the hue of the color by incremenatal amounts. I could have moved to the left or to the right of the color wheel. Meaning, I could have made the second layer color more like a blue. If I had made it more like a blue it would have decided the look of the entire painting. Since the next layer would have to be more like a green blue. Instead I wanted to make a red and orange painting, So made my second layer color more of a red. Deciding the fate of the painting for ever.

The incremenet in which I changed the color was also important. If I had made the second layer change from purple to red in 1 layer and I want to make 7 layers, than my painting will have all of the colors in the rainbow.If you only want your painting to be with a certain color range you need to think about the increment of color change between 1 layer and the next, as well as how many total layers your are going to make. The more layers you have the less the increment of color change will have to be. Based on how many additional cells I made between the first second and third layer I estimated there would be a total of 12 layers to fill in all of the white space. With this in mind. I also knew that the color gradations could not change by much in order to keep my entire painting within the purple to yellow spectrum.

This is a picture of William Howley, half way through the polysaccharide painting. As the layers recede they get exponentially more complicated. The fine-art painting technique that I am using here is the Foreground to background painting technique. I could have creating this painting using the opposite method of background to foreground approach with this painting, by creating the last layer and than simply painting the second layer over it. The problem with this is that by the time this painting is complete only a little of the background can be seen. Using that method would make take this painting about 10 times as long as the foreground to backround method. Ultimately, creating the foreground than painting the second layer behind the first is more efficient in this particular situation. Create the second layer so that it does not trespass over your first layer so your second looks like it is behind it.

At this point in the fine-art polysac painting my color increment differentiation, and size increment differentiation between my separate layers has been decided. Completing the painting is almost like an equation, all you need to do is put in the time. Everything has been set in stone, and the structure of the painting has been premeditated. Each layer is becoming smaller by the same amount as the previous layer. Since each of them are getting smaller I am also making sure to increase the amount of each Polysaccaride by 4 every time I do a layer. Increasing the amount of units per layer will keep the dominance of each layer equal. On my Project mapping paper It looked something like this…
Layer 1:   Color: dark/blue/purple                  Number of units: 5      
Layer 2:   Color: less dark/purple/little red    Number of units: 9      
Layer 3:   Color: medium/purple/more red    Number of units: 13    
Layer 4:   Color: medium/red                         Number of units: 17 

At this point in the painting there are about 9 receding layers. Each of which are getting smaller by the same amount from layer to layer. Each layer is also getting lighter in value, and passing through the color spectrum via the side of reds and oranges and yellows. Each layer is also increasing in numbers by 4 more than the last. I will continue to follow this painting technique equation, until all of the white space is filled in and my painting is complete. Also notice that I am purposely filling in the sides before the center. I am doing this because my last layers are predicted to be very bright. To keep the viewers attention I would rather have dark edges and a bright center. When the viewers eye wonders from the center it wants to return to the bright center keeping the viewers attention for a longer period of time.