Status Report

I finally got some time to get back to work on the girl illustration.

I started in on the background - sky, bushes, fence, and tree - with the gouache.
I want to eliminate as much of the line work in the back as possible so that it has a nice effect in the foreground.
The bushes will need more work after I have established the foreground art.
As you can see I used a blue grey on the fence to set it back.
I will continue working on the fence to make it lighter. I need it to be dark enough not to blend in with the dog. He will be white with some large patches of color.
I added a dark base coat to the tree. I'll continue to work on it so that it looks like it's in the evergreen family. Lots of needles, not leaves.

I'm happy with the way the gouache is going over the spray fix so far. In some spots I have to work the brush a bit to get the color to soak in and take hold. I'm guessing those are areas where I overlapped the fixative when spraying it.