Once the US flag mountain was mostly done on the left wing, I con- centrated on refining the hidden Statue of Liberty next to it. This was a little trickier, because I needed her to be seen, but not immedi- ately. It’s very easy to over paint something like this, so like the snow fields, I tried to copy only shapes from the original. I used the darker brown/blue mixture from the flag mountain and sections of snow to define the Statue’s features, trying not to paint too many harsh outlines. For the snow deep in the shadows between the mountains, I used a little more Cobalt and blue-gray mixture to change the value and color to a bit darker than the sky. Again, I tried to keep my light source as coming ambiguously from the scenery on the right wing. That made it a little softer than the originals. When I was happy with the two background mountains, I heat set them with the hairdryer.
To finish the left wing, I used the same techniques to paint in the foreground mountains. The only difference was in the colors. I used a bit thicker (less transparent) Red Brown and Reducer wash with a little Sepia mixed in to darken/gray it up. I also mixed some Sepia into the shadow colors to create more contrast. Where I could, the cracks in the rocks carried down into the shafts of the feath- ers. Using the airbrush and the foreground wash color, I faded the mountains into the wing feathers, blending one base color into the other. I cut a raggedy mountain edge from a scrap of one of my printed samples and used it as a freehand shield to airbrush a foggy mist between the foreground and background mountains. I mixed a couple drops of Beige into the light snow color for the fog, to make it a little “warmer” than the snow. When done, I ran the hairdryer across the entire scene.
Using the same colors from the left wing, I blocked in the light and shaded areas of the foreground mountains on the right wing with both paintbrush and airbrush. I also used the leftover sky color to spray in the base of the lake. The background mountain in this scene also had meadowland at the base. To faintly suggest distant green- ery, I mixed a few drops of 4209 Dark Green and Medium Gray into the lighter mountain color and gently blended a small amount into the foothills with an airbrush.
When I got to the foreground rocks around the lake, I added quite a bit of Medium Gray to my mix to dull it out.I also blended the colors and cracks into the wing feathers where I could. Using the foot- hill green mixture, I added a few more drops of Dark Green and sprayed in tiny trees. Using very little paint and keeping very close to the surface, I sprayed each tree with a jittery back and forth motion, like filling in a triangle with a fat marker while shaking or shivering.. As the trees got bigger and closer, I let off on the paint more often to form individual branches. I then added enough Flame Yellow to create a bright green for my highlight color, and applied it with tiny little dots from the airbrush. I then dashed in the barest sugges- tions of trunks using the Sepia/dark mountain color mixture with a paintbrush. I did this only to the few closest trees, and heat set the whole thing.
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