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Asher: Step 1

Friday, July 15th, 2005

Asher

In between serious paintings, every artist spends a certain amount of time painting for practice or just for fun. While I am gearing up for my next major composition, I have been working on a number of small, quick oil sketches and I thought it might be interesting to post the progression of one of those little paintings in the studio. Please feel free to write in with any questions or comments you may have as we go.

I selected this photograph of my son, Asher from a file I keep handy of random pictures I think I might enjoy painting. Since I am only painting for practice, I am working on an inexpensive, student-grade canvas panel. Normally I think cotton canvas has a somewhat boring, cheap-looking texture, but it will certainly work here.

The first step is to quickly chop in the most basic proportions. I find I do a much better job of this if I ignore as much fine detail as possible. I am working with a combination of burnt umber and ivory black, thinned with turpentine and just a touch of linseed oil. A very thin wash of the same pigments both covers up the glaring white of the canvas, and softens the lines of the sketch, giving me a little wiggle room to refine the sketch as I go.

As things start to take shape, and I feel comfortable with the placement of the basic shape, I refine the sketch with burnt umber and ivory black, thinning the paint much to give darker, more exact lines. I use a large brush (large for me is pretty small to a lot of painters) to add some simple shadows.

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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."