Quent Cordair Fine Art

And now, to wrap this one up… Completing the dress was pretty straightforward. I continued to get more comfortable with the technique as I worked, and by the time I finished I was almost sorry there wasn’t more dress to paint. There was very little final touch-up work to be done, mainly brightening highlights on the fountain and the face.

For a simple little figure painting, this has been really fun to work on and an opportunity to try out a few new techniques. I am really pleased with the final result as well.

Thanks for following the progress of this piece. Please write in with any final thoughts, comments or questions you may have.

All that remains to be painted is the dress. I have described several times, here in the studio, my standard procedure for painting drapery. I typically will paint the mid-tones first and then blend in the darker shadows and the highlights. Well, this has been a fairly experimental painting from a technical standpoint, and the trend continues here. I found that I could achieve a very soft, light, cotton feel to the dress by using thick paint (straight color with no added oil or turpentine) on a small round brush, and putting down final colors in one pass. At first this seemed to be taking considerably longer than my other method, but I got faster as I went, and since this should all but eliminate the need for a second coat of paint, (whites can be somewhat transparent on drying, but this coat is so thick that I seriously doubt that will be an issue here) it may actually prove to be faster overall. I don’t think the same would hold true if this were a larger painting unless I could find a way to achieve the same result on a larger scale with a bigger round brush. In any case, it is working wonderfully here, and I love the results. I wish there were a way to show the surface texture in this image, but the camera just doesn’t pick it up.

In this image, everything but the dress is finished. Just as I anticipated, the right leg was actually easier to paint than the left one. It took longer since it is a lot bigger in terms of square inches, but there was no real trouble getting it to look just right. Actually, it is my favorite of all the feet I have painted.

The right arm went well too, but took much longer that the leg. Subtle areas like the inside of the elbow and the armpit require a lot of care. Although most people would have a really hard time drawing either of these things well, almost anyone would be immediately aware if something were wrong with someone else’s drawing (or painting). This is an especially delicate task when painting women. Exaggeration of musculature, veins and wrinkles are not a huge problem with a male figure, but it will absolutely ruin a female figure painting.

I always find it interesting what your eye will and will not accept in an image. For example, the reflections of the hand and foot in the fountain and wet concrete respectively, really didn’t make a lot of visual sense when the figure was unpainted. Now they are quite obviously reflections. They become suddenly recognizable once a little context is provided.

The left arm and leg were next to be painted. They represented a relatively small amount of work mainly because both are partially obscured. The one slightly tricky spot was the left foot. Almost completely covered, flexed, and highly foreshortened, I found that until I had fussed with it quite a bit and made the most miniscule adjustments, it really just looked like a weird flesh-colored lump. I fully expect that the right leg, even though it covers more area, will be finished in less time, and with much less reworking.

Before I started in on the figure, the remainder of the background needed to be finished. I neglected to photograph the progress of the painting between steps, so that background work will be, unfortunately, overshadowed somewhat by the more interesting work on the figure.

I have been continuously emphasizing that this current series of paintings is intended to provide me with practice painting figures as much as anything else. With this painting I am really beginning to see tangible results. It isn’t that the finished product is necessarily any better than what has come before, but the ease with which it was painted was considerably greater from the mixing of the colors to the application of the final brush strokes. In fact, the process went so quickly that I ended up painting the face and hair in the same sitting.

I have written commentary on enough paintings here in the studio that I am beginning to feel a bit repetitive when it comes to describing the process involved in painting a figure. Rather than continue to do so, I will limit my commentary to theme and compositional comments, and a brief overview of what has changed since the last installment. I encourage anyone who would like further elaboration on any aspect of this painting to please write in to the studio. I will be happy to answer as fully as possible. Any other comments or questions are also welcome.