The Fine Art of Illustration

The Imprisoned, oil on canvas board, 20x16"
Photographed by Katharine Manning at www.katmanning.com

Here is the figure painting from last week, finished up into a complete painting. I had a lot of fun on this one, and I've submitted it to Spectrum! Wish me luck!

The piece started off as a two day figure painting, and the most important part (the figure) was finished in those two days, around 12 to 14 hours. The study just so happened to come out well enough that I decided to take it further, and after doing a very brief digital sketch that I shared last week, I dove right into the painting, improvising as I painted, a very different process than how I typically approach my illustrations.

The figure painting already invoked some sort of feeling and setting to my eyes, so I knew the direction I wanted to go in and went for it. The last thing that really tied it all together was painting the gate behind the marble column. Every element in the background serves a compositional purpose; the dark drapery was meant to break up the large space of the back wall and help frame the left column, and the rug was added to break up the space of the floor and reinforce the perspective of the room. Finally, I was left with this cooler, lighter value against the right column to help bring it forward in space, but I didn't know what this shape would become. I began to add thin lines to suggest planks of wood on a door, but when my hand slipped and the line became thicker, I started to see a prison gate. I painted the rest of it in, and it worked!

It really helped give the suggestion of a story & added some mystery. I saw the figure as fairly regal, perhaps an angry, bitter or ruthless young ruler. By why would he be nude? What function would that serve in the story? As I painted the background, I thought of it as a Throne room or hall as first, but with the addition of the prison gate who knows? The curtain is pulled back as if to reveal the gate. Is the gate leading out into a prison, and the curtain revealing what's in there that we can't see? Or are we as the viewers inside the prison with our main character, nude and on display? Perhaps our character is a prized gladiator or slave, kept in a special chamber by his Dominus. Or maybe I've watched too much Spartacus. I'll leave it up to you to decide!

I really love painting and drawing studies from life, because the practice is it's own reward. There is no concern for a finished product that is meant for a portfolio or a client, but rather you are painting for the sake of painting and improving. It takes a lot of pressure off! In my illustrations, I spend anywhere from 40 to 60 hours per painting, and that's after thumbnailing, sketching roughs, taking reference photos, and doing a tight pencil drawing. It was rejuvenating to break away from that for a couple of weeks and just paint for the practice. And I got a portfolio piece out of one of them to boot!

While this painting has become an illustration, I'll shortly be adding a new section to my website to incorporate my other figure paintings, plein air paintings, and studies that otherwise wouldn't have a place in my illustration portfolio. Since I've shared my figure paintings on the previous two posts, today I'm sharing a few of my plein air paintings from July & August 2014 as a preview.

Shrine at Old Westbury Gardens, oil on board, 8x10"

Christopher Morley Park, oil on board, 8x10"

Child's Cabin at Old Westbury, oil on board, 8x8"

Castle Gould, watercolor, around 4x2"

Lake George, oil on board, 11x6.5"

Sands Point Bluffs, oil on board, 10x8"