Lighting and Finishing

I've been working hard on the two walls, using them as a testing ground for finishing and lighting. After staining most of them, I wasn't very happy with the result - they looked very blotchty, and the detail of the construction was lost in the detail of the finish. In fact, they looked like shit, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. The only solution, really, is to paint very thing coats of regular flat paint (thinned with water to be semi-transparent) over the wood, to hide the grain to a large degree, and even the whole thing out. I've been looking at a book about the making of 'The Corpse Bride', and ripping off their approach. Therefore, i've been darkening edges and corners with a black pen, and painting out the rest with even coats of colour (see bottom right photo in the set pictures). It seems to have improves things.

I've also found that strong directional lighting (i.e. Rembrant/Vermeer lighting, see the bottom painting in the two painting image) just ain't working. It's partially because i'm not using very good lighting for my tests, but still, it's not cutting it. Further tests have shown me that 'Bruegel' lighting works alot better (see top painting in two-painting image) - nice even light with rich tones, and areas of black in local colour - no giant Vermeer shadows.