If appropriate to the subject, Varoujan brings in a pale gold acrylic to highlight points within the composition. The pale gold, like everything else, is added at several places to maintain balance. In "Romeo and Juliet," gold appears in the flower area, at Juliet's crown, in the diamond shapes cascading, and in the rose leaves in her hand. Next he adds a medium tone of cobalt mixed with light blue. This mixture is typically usedon skin tones and then repeated elsewhere in the painting. In the demo, Juliet's face and then Romeo's were covered in blue. Varoujan points out that the underlying marker lines bleed through, but may be redrawn if the blue covers any part of the eye details. As this blue base is drying, Varoujan brings in white to make contours and start building his forms. He adds highlights to the face and chin with thick and then thin mixtures of white. He suggests that painting highlights and shadows to indicate the light is coming from below gives the painting a romantic look -- like candle light.
He streaks the fingers with white, allowing the line of marker to show through. More colors, including reds and bronze yellow, are added to the composition. He lays in dark colors on the black and light colors on the white, always repeating both his warm and cool colors. If he's after a vibrant tone, he adds orange near his blue."Cool colors show off the warm color. Orange and red together are not as vibrant.Fire and ice -- these determine which color goes where." As he continues to add to his color mosaic, he starts feathering tones with a dark mixture of cobalt and thallo blue or with burnt umber. "I take a flat form and add to it by blending a contour." Dark color contours makes a shape recede. Shading also with white, his blue mixture, and transparent black, Varoujan pulls more clearly defined forms and figures from his composition. The final acrylic paint brought into Varoujan's demo is a Daler-Rowney heavy- body silver on the border and a few shapes inside. With the canvas now covered, he touches up any marker lines that may have been painted over. He corrects the evenness of some lines and lets others fade in and out. He adds details to rose petals or others points of interest with additional marker lines over his acrylic colors.