Tackling Tiepolo once more

This time it's the son Giovanni Battista.

Decided to try out the Anthony Ryder 'Envelope'. This actually turns out to be quite helpful - though I see now I could have added a couple of horizontals and verticals to help line things up even better. Especially a vertical from the leftmost guy's face that would give me placement for the saint beard, his elbow, and the standing dude's leg. Maybe also a horizontal just under the lower right corner guy's hair which could really help line up all those knees and his own hands. But his head quite fortuitously aligns itself nicely with two lines already there.

Sketching the figures in. Had to make several changes before it started to work (it still isn't perfect).

What the hell was I thinking? I started the painting using chalk brushes - D'oh!! Never again! Looks kinds pretty, but they give absolutely no control. Then I stupidly tried to fix it by using the hard and soft round brushes (that's not the stupid part) but my concentration just wasn't there at all - I kept using brushes way too big and did most of the painting with big soft fuzzy brushes. I spent up to about the 1.75 hour mark just screwing it up in various ways, then started to go in and fix it little by little.

Finally here it is at the 2 hr mark. This is all I got in me tonight - I'll finish it tomorrow. I can see the saint's knee needs to come down a ways and the lower right guy's hand should move up and nestle almost behind his knee.