Here's the finished painting. I know this 'final image' milestone should be accompanied by an explanation of the story behind the picture but I think artwork is much more entertaining when people draw their own conclusions about the background to a piece or, better yet, made up a story of their own that fits the image.

I suppose an explanation of why I chose this picture for the 'spectacular' theme is in order. When I started sketching out ideas for the challenge, I was exploring images that were spectacular in scale and presence, but the results weren't satisfying. I came to realise that what I'd drawn wasn't spectacular at all, just big. To me, it's the quiet little spectacles which surround us every day, fleeting moments of wonder and excitement that we so often take for granted, that are truly spectacular. I've tried to capture something of that sensation in my entry.

"Shh..!"

All done. I'll return when I have a little more time to explain what I've been up to in these final few steps.

We're on the ground! We're not quite 'there' yet, but I don't anticipate any major changes from this point as the final tweaks are performed while we taxi towards the terminal.

Getting close now. Just a few little things to tidy up and some balancing to take care of. I'm a bit worried that I've managed to kill the depth in the piece somewhere along the line, and it's definately not feeling 'right' just yet. I hope I can solve those problems in the remaining hours.

"This is your captain speaking, ladies and gentlemen. We will shortly be beginning our descent..."

Heh. That's the best way I can think of to describe the stage this is at now - most of the journey is behind us and the destination will shortly be coming into view. This is the most exciting part of the trip - let's hope we don't run into any turbulence on the way down!

Details are starting to go in; hair and bits of texture here and there and adding a little more interest to the background. I've quickly fudged in a rim light on the foreground plane to get an idea of how that affects the balance of colours - I'd expect the final to be more subtle than this one, but we'll see how it pans out.

Sorry I've not been very chatty this time around - my energy's having to go into the painting rather than typing! Many, many thanks for all the support though, it's very interesting to read your comments and it really helps to keep me motivated.

All tidied up ready for rendering and details.

Not had much time for this lately, but I should have the chance to move it along this week. In this update, I've begun working my way around the coloured sketch, just tidying things up where necessary - removing any linework or untidy brushmarks and so on.

I was looking at the uplighting to the old man's face and decided to try and emphasize it a little more. While I was fiddling around, I tried a blue tint to contrast with the warm glow from the flower and it struck me that this might be a good mechanism to seperate the foreground and background. I'm not sure about having the scene at night, but having the kids hiding in the shadows like this adds to the mood of excitement a little. I think I prefer these colours - any thoughts?

Once I'm happy with the basic layout of colours, I flatten the image and begin to work into the pic. First step here is just to tidy things up a bit, figuring out where I want hard and soft edges and placing a few marks to remind myself where I'll need to place details. I'm a bit worried about the seperation between the foreground and background at this stage, but I'm hoping that will be solved as I continue to refine things.