End of Week Commission Update - Free Will

Well, even though you wont be able to watch SpaceX's starship prototype SN9 fly today (thanks a lot FAA), you can check out the progress made on the Free Will commission painting as of this afternoon. 

Earlier in the week I "finished" the underpainting pass over the background for the painting. I put the word finished in quotes because there are still some things I need to finalize over on the left hand side, particularly in the mid to foreground...but I think I need the figures in place for context before I can figure out exactly what those things are. What I do have on the panel should be enough context to get the figures painted. Such is the iterative nature of working out a complex composition like this one. 

To that end (getting the figures in place), I spent the rest of the week working on the underpainting for the first of the figures. One down, Nine to go (plus block towers etc.). 

As with the background, I'm working roughly from back to front with the figures, and starting on the right hand side where the lighting is a little more intuitive. Once that group of five kids is finished, along with their props, I'll move on to the group on the left, and then finish up with the central figure. 

It's very exciting seeing this all start to come together!

I'm nearly finished with a video edit of work on this figure which I'll post in the next few days. There is a cap on the total GB of video footage I can upload per week, so I'm mostly waiting for that counter to roll over before I can upload. I haven't recorded the audio over the top of the footage yet, so this would be an ideal time to ask any related questions you might have about the process. Hopefully I can address one or two of them in the video.

Edit: Third image added showing progress on block tower before the end of the day. Whew!