Experimenting with what?

Some direct painting and the primary light being directly behind the image plane.

Ack, you use such technical terms and I'm nothing but a humble pirate...

Direct painting is just literally picking the color and placing it on the canvas without any kind of underpainting or in the case of digital without using a bunch of layers. The image plane is where the image sits, the frame you see up there, and when I say I want the primary light behind it I mean I want the light coming from where the viewer is seeing the image. I don't use that lighting setup much but I have recently started enjoying it.

I really enjoy the painting style you achieved here. Did you use an underpainting sketch or dive right into direct painting with light/shape massing? I'd like to attempt an approach like this!

I started with a sketch and laying out the darks, then I just dropped color into the right places for a while. And thank you!