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Born With Wings: Step 14

Born With Wings

I brought the grass line down to the bottom of the feet before finishing the legs, but no further so that the grass could overlap the toes in the foreground.

Painting the feet is delicate work. The position of the toes is actually quite important to the final feel of the pose, as slight shifts seem to suggest shifts in the weight of the figure. In this case the figure clearly has most of her weight on her right leg, and so the position of the left foot needs to reflect that it is on the ground, but not supporting weight. Even more delicate however is the painting of veins and musculature, especially on female figures. It can’t be left out without giving the figure a plastic, Barbie-like look, but it is VERY easy to over-do. One trick is to paint only highlights and no shadows on the most subtle of these features (or if they are in the shadow side, paint only shadows and no highlights).

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2004 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Born With Wings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Born With Wings: Step 14”

  1. Barbara Says:
    January 6th, 2004 at 7:15 pm

    I hesitate to post this far into this process, but I’ve just discovered this feature. I’d also like to preface this question with the comment that I love your work and admire your artistic ability -hope to someday afford one of your original works.

    I notice the position of the woman’s foot(her left) changed from the initial draft to the working sketch (from facing approximately front to face somewhat left (her left) of that), but the position of her knee did not change. The juxtaposition has bothered me from the start. The initial sketch got it right.

    I wonder what the thought was in changing the position of the foot but not of the knee?

  2. Bryan Larsen Says:
    January 6th, 2004 at 7:30 pm

    Thank you for your comments Barbara! I certainly don’t mind the occasional critical comment. As I mentioned earlier in the series, the original drawing was made without reference to a model. Also, the figure in the sketch is standing on flat ground. The figure in the painting is standing on a hill that is increasingly dropping away toward the foreground. The left foot is rotated out slightly at the ankle to accommodate the terrain. The crease in the pant leg does exaggerate the position of her knee a bit as well. I can say with full confidence that the figure is true to the model. This sort of complexity is one of the many reasons why I work from reference material as much as possible. Please feel free to let me know if the foot bothers you as much once the ground is painted in completely.

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About Bryan Larsen ~

Bryan Larsen

"I was born on February 12, 1975, and have been drawing as long as I can remember. By the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be an artist, although at the time I didn't have a clear idea of how exactly I would use my talents to make a living.

"As I continued studying art, I began to suspect that fine visual art was dead. No one seemed interested in teaching students how to draw well, or paint well. More often than not, my own skills exceeded those of my instructors.

"The only field left that seemed to require good drawing, painting, and compositional skills was illustration, and therefore I began studying illustration at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. I became even more convinced that I had made the right decision in staying away from fine art as I endured course after course of required "drawing" and "painting" classes in which instructors required me to draw with "less focus", or use ridiculous materials such as shellac, glue, sand, salt, etc.

"My second year at Utah State, I met Damon Denys. In discussing Art with him I realized that there were other people who believed that technique and subject matter were indispensable components of any work of art. I then decided that I would work to develop my own painting skills with the purpose of creating artwork that I considered worthy of being called Fine Art.

"Since that time, I have studied on my own: Drawing from live models to learn the human form, studying proper painting techniques from any source I could find ample reason to trust, and developing a philosophy of Art based on reason, and life on earth.

"My goal is to portray the heroic and romantic in human nature and human achievement in a realistic style and a modern setting. I place particular emphasis on composition, technique, realistic detail, proper craftsmanship and consistency of style."