There is a good lesson to be learned here; a crystal clear idea and preliminary drawing is key in order to create a successful piece. My reference photos came out well, but didn't match up exactly with my original thumbnail. That's no fault of my reference, but rather because my initial thumbnail didn't resolve a few basic issues, such as where the horizon line is. Chris Oatley calls rushing through stages of art, "The Starting Buzz."
After taking my reference photos and trying to work out a composition in Photoshop, I was really struggling to get it to look like my original thumbnail. I was unhappy with some of the body language and facial expressions, and it wasn't looking like a Tarzan book cover to me.
The end result; I've decided to shelve the project for now. No, it won't make it in time for Spectrum, but rushing into a painting and doing it anyway wouldn't do my portfolio any favors, or help my chances of getting into the annual. I'd rather sit on it for a while, thumbnail some more, and come up with an illustration that I love later on in the year. I can always submit it for Spectrum 23 in 2016!
That being said, sometimes there are "Happy Accidents," so-to-speak. This past week I was still in the figure painting class that I wrote about last Monday. The first week of the class focused on one day poses, while the second week we had the opportunity to paint two day poses.
For the first two day pose, we had a great model whose physique recalled classic greco-roman paintings and sculpture. The pose struck me as rather regal, and the result was a figure painting refined enough to be turned into a full illustration. And since the piece only needs an environment for this character to exist in, I am currently working towards having this painting done in time to submit for Spectrum. I'll show it to you in the various stages, as I did in last week's post.
The first stage: drawing done in very thinned burnt sienna on toned canvas board. I took 40 minutes with this drawing, working slowly and more carefully than with the one day poses.
Stage 2: Blocking in shadows and refining the drawing with some raw umber.
Stage 3: After premixing my average colors, I start to block in the figure. Now it's lunch time!
Stage 4: At the end of the first day, the figure is entirely blocked in. Keep in mind, this is where I would be by lunchtime on a one day pose. But I worked larger this time, and was more careful with every stage. I knew as long as I had this much done today, I could finish the painting on the second day with glazes. The painting is 20x16" on canvas board.
One other thing to notice is the intentional over-modeling of the ribcage & abdomen. You'll see after the second day that I soften things up quite a bit. This was a tip I picked up from reading Patrick J. Jones' Sci-Fi & Fantasy Oil Painting Techniques. Think of painting the figure as building the figure. You start with the skeleton, then the musculature, and finally the skin. This mimics the way I start off my drawings, I draw the basic shapes of the skeleton first (ribcage, spine, hips, head, etc). It is better to give yourself more anatomy to work with, to try to see every piece of the puzzle, and then soften it where you need by painting over it later, mimicking the way skin works to cover so much more than we can see under the surface.
His pose and expression already suggest story, now he needs a setting! I use Photoshop to sketch in a background digitally, before going for it on the actual canvas.
Here is my digital sketch. You can see I'm planning on adding two marble columns, some sort of back wall a la Frank Frazetta, and some sort of mist or smoke the way I did in my figure painting of the old man last week. All in all adds to the regal look of the figure, puts him in a time and place, but is still mysterious and ambiguous. I'm working on the painting now, and I'm eager to show you all when it's finished! Be sure to follow me on Facebook if you don't yet, because I'll likely post it there first.
Finally, here are the other two paintings I did this week.
This painting was a two day pose as well, and quite a challenge! Reclining poses are always difficult, as you can get some really weird foreshortening, and it didn't help that our model was sinking into the fur coat she was laying on. This one is also 20x16" on canvas board.
I love this pose, especially with the props and the dramatic lighting, but it meant that all the subtlety in the lit areas were that much more important for the figure to read well, and not flatten out anywhere. You can see in some ways this painting is a lot less finished from the other two day pose, and that's largely due to really taking my time on the first day to nail down the drawing. It took several sessions to get the drawing right, and my block-in at the end of the first day wasn't very refined. I did much of the work to get it to where it is on the second day.
And finally, since we had five days of class, our last session was a one day pose. It was a relatively short day as we were ending early, so I decided to do a small study of a hand instead of a full figure.
His hand was resting on his thigh, though it also bears a resemblance to the position in which one holds a pencil. I painted this one on an 8x10" board, and the painting is just about life size. This one took about two hours.
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