This should give a better idea of the direction the painting is headed (compared to the underpainting post). The underpainted background is overpainted (is that a word?), and now the sky is blue/purple and the sand is yellow/tan. Hopefully it makes more sense now.
I noticed as I was painting that I’m not all that satisfied with how I gessoed the board. I think I laid the gesso on too thick, and all that prickly texture that I had in my other animal rots paintings isn’t there. So the underpainting doesn’t show through as much as I would have liked and the way I would have liked.
Here’s a close-up of the sky in Jeeraffe (on the left) compared with a close-up of the sky in Camul. The gesso texture is definitely thicker than I want it.
I hope the end result still works because it’s too late to do anything about it now short of starting over. And I won’t be doing that.