Daily Painting by Artist Dominique Amendola: Mahaprabhu in the Jarikhanda forest, original oil painting on canvas by Dominique Amendola

Mahaprabhu in the Jarikhanda forest, oil painting on linen canvas 36 inches by 48 inches. (This image is under strict copyright to Dominique Amendola. )

This painting illustrates a pastime of Lord Chaitanya described in the Chaitanya Charitamrita.
After some time Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu again started on His tour towards northern India, and He decided to visit Vṛndāvana and its neighboring places. He passed through the jungles of Jharikhaṇḍa (Madhya Bhārata), and all the wild animals also joined His saṅkīrtana movement. The wild tigers, elephants, bears, and deer all together accompanied the Lord, and the Lord accompanied them in saṅkīrtana. By this, He proved that by the propagation of the saṅkīrtana movement (congregational chanting and glorifying of the name of the Lord) even the wild animals can live in peace and friendship, and what to speak of men who are supposed to be civilized.

This painting is painted in a classical style using the Venitian painters techniques such as Titian, the medieval Renaissance Italian artist. I am here to show you the step by step process to realize it.

In this painting, I have used the scumbling method in the underpainting mostly. The underpainting is executed with acrylics. It helps to establish the foundation for the whole artwork. I have my own way to paint and I am not claiming this is a demo for the Venetian technique of the Renaissance. However, I really think it is close to it, with the difference that for their underpainting, they used tempera, not acrylic.

I have always begun such an elaborate composition with numerous sketches.

Here is the final sketch ready to be transferred to the canvas:

In this sketch, you can already see how the composition revolves around lord Chaitanya and how the arm and the elephant trump circle high above his head.

The Steps for the Acrylic layer.

My canvas was toned first with a Venitian red and I started with the black outlines of the painting and the lights are appearing as well as the shadows, painted afterward.

Everything is established from the beginning, the light and dark tones and more. This is the acrylic layer before it was scumbled.

The scumbling is done with white acrylic paint. You will see how the thin layer of white has created some beautiful grays. That is the whole idea for using that red earth color. Once scrambled, it creates incredible gray tones and you can establish beautiful tones on top of that. In the end, the colors will vibrate with a lot of depths from that technique.

The Steps for the oil layer.

This is the first oil paint layer. I go slowly on colors avoiding strong colors at first. Notice how I treat the figure. It is painted in a gray layer at first, to establish the form and to intensify his luminous body.

The gray layer is applied to the skin colors. All the layers are glazed step by step.