
I start with a spray-fixed drawing of charcoal and blue, red and yellow pastels. I mix up a fresh batch of egg yolk medium strengthened with maybe 6 or 8 percent safflower oil, and begin with the same gold ochre developing the drawing on the dancer and her costume. After the contours are indicated, I lay in areas of somewhat flat local color: burnt sienna on the skin, indian yellow on the hair, gold jewelry and skirt, and a mixture of ultramarine and cobalt blue on the drapery over her head and the sash on her left. Then with another layer or two of each local color I begin to indicate the darker areas of color that will be needed for effects of shadow or darker local color. As I am working with the indian yellow, I expand it out beyond the dancer to the upper right and down to the lower left to create a base color for the dark reddish orange cloud that will fill the bottom half of the painting.

Now I mix up a new batch of paint medium, egg yolk and water only, no oil, and with a little of this I mix up some persian red – a slightly bluish earth red. I drop some of this in a small bottle and add a little more egg medium and a lot more water.

For the effects of the nebula on the top left of the painting I go back to the safflower oil fortified medium and paint in the big cloudy forms directly behind the dancer and her veil. On the shadowy parts of the forms I use cobalt blue and white, then maroon and white alternately, then I paint in the backlighting on the top and side edges with white with just a bit of gold ochre.

After all this dried overnight, the next morning I laid a big sheet of transparent mylar over my dancer and with a felt tip pen traced out the silhouette of her figure and hair, her veil and the top edge of the orange and red cloud forms that comprise the bottom half of the painting. Back at my worktable, I plugged in my electric stencil cutting tool, which melts the mylar with a very hot pin point, and I cut out the shape of the dancer’s veil, her torso, and the top of the orange clouds. Then laying my panel flat on some low stools, I laid the mylar stencil over the dancer and held it in place with several small pieces of plate glass.
At this point I change back to the egg yolk medium with no oil addition and begain mixing my new colors for the day. I spray a couple of light layers of cobalt blue and then some cobalt green, and then go on to some ultramarine blue. After each layer, I wipe away some of the pigment that has beaded up on the oilier underlayer with a dry piece of paper towel. I then spray some maroon and then some more indian yellow on the transition areas against the orange clouds below.

The next two layers of spray are with cobalt blue and ultramarine blue again, but this time each is mixed with a good portion of titanium white, crating an atmospheric veil effect over the transparent colors below. After this, I remove the stencils and take a look at what I have done. The edges of the orange cloud forms are very crisp and hard, so I take a q-tip, dip it in egg medium and very delicately remove just enough paint along the edges to make a soft cloudy transition. Using the same technique, I delicately remove a lot of the blue glazes that have accumulated over my pale white backlighting on the clouds, like making lights on a drawing with an eraser, and then I do the same thing to create a few stars.
The next day’s work is done almost entirely with paint applied with a small synthetic sponge in the form of a disc two inches across. They are sold in drugstoeres for make-up application, but they put egg tempera on just fine. The skirt gets a very delicate glaze of cadmium yellow deep, so does the halter and some of the yellow lights on the cloud forms. The dancer’s body and hair get a very light glaze of burnt umber to drop it into a deeper value. The value seems deep enough, but the color is so warm that later I will have to give it a coat of ultramarine and white to make it more muted.
I mix up the first of several batches of gold ochre and cadmium red deep and begin applying this over the darks of the red clouds layer after layer until it builds up quite dark. In the lower left and in the center the shadowy parts of the clouds are darkened with a medium grey made of raw umber and white then later glazed over with the cadmium yellow deep.
This ochre and red mixture has a good value but is kind of dead as a paint layer, but a wonderful fix for that is a glaze of the unmixed cadmium red over the darks. I make another stencil to cover the yellow skirt, blue veil and pale sky, and do a fairly quick job on the glaze with tmy trusty mouth sprayer.

After all this darkening of these red clouds the yellow skirt is way too pale so I strengthen all the darks with very soft glazes of the same cadmium red deep, but this time I do it with a large round pointed sable brush until the values begin to merge with the background. A little more detail drawing with the same dark red finishes up this stage.