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Archive for the ‘Born With Wings’ Category

Born With Wings: Step 8

Friday, December 12th, 2003

Born With Wings

Although I generally would finish the background before working on the figure, the figure is really much more fun to paint. So….that’s what I did.

I like to work in a lot of the detail right from the beginning, so I mixed a full range of flesh tones and made a first pass over the face trying to get all of the basic values in. Next I blended in more shadow and highlight. Final fine details like eyebrows, corners of the mouth and brightest highlights were last. I usually like the end result more if I use the reference material to get the basic likeness and then add the final details without it. This helps me work on the effect of the whole face and the expression as opposed to just focusing on individual details of the face.

Born With Wings: Step 7

Tuesday, December 9th, 2003

Born With Wings

The next step was to finish the plane. As I mentioned earlier, the reference photo I had for the plane was taken in flight so the wheel pants and the prop were adapted from other planes. This required a little bit of guess work and adjustment, but I am quite happy with the result.

Born With Wings: Step 6

Saturday, December 6th, 2003

Born With Wings

At this point the blue in the sky was dry enough for me to adjust the positions of the clouds that had been bothering me. I also added more detail to the clouds working back and forth with increasingly contrasting shadow and highlight colors. I glazed over the blue sky with a slightly darker blue and painted in the wispy, more delicate clouds. Since the clouds show through the canopy of the plane, I reworked it as well adding reflections and highlights to the glass at the same time.

Born With Wings: Step 5

Thursday, December 4th, 2003

Born With Wings

The studio I share with Damon Denys is involved in a monthly downtown Gallery Stroll in Salt Lake City. I worked a rather long day the day before the stroll to get this section of plane and background hills started so that viewers could begin to see the shape the piece was taking.

The reference photos I had of the plane were taken in flight, and so I had to do some guesswork with the reflections on the body of the plane. The landing gear were actually taken from photos of a P-57 mustang with a military paint job, so the later reflection work on those involved some guesswork as well.

Born With Wings: Step 4

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

Born With Wings

The first step was to block in the sky. I had a few reference photos taken from by back yard, but as later images will show, I ended up moving some of the clouds around later. I wasn’t happy with the big vertical line just above the figure’s right shoulder.

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."