Trigger Transmogrified

I had the portrait at this stage, and called the owner over to see what she thought of it so far.   She said it was a very good likeness of Trigger, but ...
Kim did not want to criticize my work. I had to worm it out of her - she wanted the background darker to really show him off. I had not taken Kim as being dramatic - NEVER assume! 

I did one w/w wash, using 2 mixtures of ultramarine blue, quin. red and quin. burnt orange. I let it dry and set for a day. I thought it was too blue and needed to be darker, so ...

I did another w/w wash with a purply-gray made of the same 3 pigments.  I believe it is darker and grayer than it appears here, but the ultramarine is so overpowering, that's all you can see. Now that the background is dark, I can go in and darken Trigger's features and shadows. That was another of Kim's queries.

As always, your comments are most welcome.

While Working on Trigger ...

Reference

Laid in a wash of cobalt blue and alizarin.

Several glazes of aureolin, new gamboge and quin. burnt orange.

More quin. burnt orange, quin. siena and a green mixture.
The dark is my favorite orange, purple, blue mixture.

Same blue and red mix for shadow. Again, quin. burnt orange, quin. violet and aureolin.

Same colors, just intensifying them with a w/w wash in the shaded area.

Why these are cock-eyed, I don't know. They are aligned properly in my album.
Anyway, same red and blue for the shadow and the graded wash.

I'm pretty much using the same colors with all three leaves.
All are small pieces - less than 60 square inches. Just something to play with, while working on Trigger.

As always, your comments are most welcome.