Quent Cordair Fine Art

The final step in completing the painting was painting the stepped, marble wall on which Icarus is landing. This was actually really fun. I had no reference material whatsoever, but was able to fuss around with the stone until it looked enough like marble that I was satisfied. ‘Study for the Triumph of Icarus’ was finished.

As much as I love the way this little piece turned out, it more importantly accomplished its primary purposes. I was able to work out many of the challenges associated with the design and painting of the wings and discovered a few issues that will need to be address before attempting the larger multiple figure composition (way better to catch them now than a month into a huge canvas). I am also more excited than ever to get moving on the larger painting, though it may still be some time before I am actually putting paint down.

As always, thanks for visiting the Artist’s Studio. Please feel free to share any comments or questions.

Now, as much as I liked the way Icarus was looking all decked out in his flight gear and strategically placed toga, I thought it would be so much better if he had some sort of surroundings…a place to land, for example, and maybe a nice background. After all, without these details, it would be impossible to tell from the image whether he was just taking off, just landing, or just trying on the apparatus for a fitting. Since the whole idea behind the composition was to infer that he had, contrary to the Greek story, survived his flight and escaped from Crete, I decided on a stepped, marble wall with the sea in the background as his touchdown site.
At first, I opted to go simple, with a blue sky, light, scattered clouds, and a glimpse of landmass on the horizon.

Once I put the sky in place, I immediately disliked it. First of all, the temperature of the light on the figure was not at all in line with that of the blue sky. Second, the calmness of the scene didn’t seem to provide enough of a dramatic backdrop for the event. So I did a little scrap-hunting and found a few images of a rougher sea, with waves crashing on the rocks and a stormier sky which not only added some much needed tension to the composition, but also fit the lighting on the figure better. I started by covering up the offending blue sky…

…and then moved from background to foreground painting the rocks and crashing waves. The result was, in my opinion, quite satisfactory.

With the figure complete, I was now free to begin work on the wings. I had decided on using the wings of a raptor, or bird of prey as a model, mainly because they tend to have a more aggressive design, both structurally and aesthetically. When I began this whole endeavor, I anticipated the painting of the wings to be the most challenging aspect, but as I got into the process, I found that the lighting and texture came pretty naturally, and that they were actually really fun to paint. Several days later, this is how the wings turned out:

Already, I have accepted that in the final painting, the full composition, the wings will need to be considerably larger. But for now, I really like the way they look.

The sort of pseudo-engineering of the wings and their mechanical harness was one of the most fun aspects of working on this little study. I say pseudo-engineering, because I am fully aware of the impossibility of this setup actually allowing anyone, regardless of their physical strength, to glide…much less achieve powered flight. All I was after was a design that looked somewhat plausible and, more important, looked cool. For me, the mechanical nature of the wings is everything. The important part of the story is Daedalus using his ingenuity to defy the gods and the fates. Wings grafted onto Icarus’ back with no visible hint of their operating parts would never have flown…so to speak. Having said all of that, I do plan on modifying this design slightly when I get around to the final painting mainly by increasing the wingspan by at least a third, and perhaps revealing a little mechanical articulation at the main joints in the wings.

Also in this first image, you will note the completion of Icarus’ wee toga, complete with trailing drapery in the style of all good paintings of Greek myth. Sadly, for compositional reasons, and violation of the plausible direction of airflow during our hero’s descent, the trailing drapery’s part in this painting is to be short lived. Even so, painting the toga was an entertaining exercise. My model, as you may imagine, was not so draped during out little photo shoot. In fact, he was wearing the modern day equivalent (a paint of tasteful boxer briefs) which would have been completely anachronistic and considerably less graceful in the painting. So I had to improvise. Certainly I could mock-up some sort of reference for the final painting; though I think I pulled this temporary fix off well enough.
At this point, I was itching to get to painting the wings. However, being the patient painter that I am, I decided to finish the figure first. All that remained was the legs. As with the rest of the figure, my model’s physique provided me with way more information than I could possibly fit into a painting, especially a smallish-sized study such as this. So, working on the legs was as much an exercise in selecting essential details as it was in mixing colors and values. Here is an image of the first leg I completed (the figure’s left)…

…and one of the complete figure, awaiting his wings:

Next I moved on the torso, working in the same fashion as with the arm. Again, the amount of detail available in the reference photos was far greater than would be appropriate for the painting, so I tried to carefully select just those details that would get the job done without going over the top. Even so, you can see there is a lot going on. Here is where the careful and accurate work on the drawing and the transfer really pays off. Since I’ve already figured out where everything goes, how big each muscle is, and how they all fit together, all I have to worry about is color and value…which is plenty…believe me. Not only does each individual form have to turn in space, but the torso as a whole has to appear round.

After the torso was finished, I continued on to the right arm.
All of the flesh tones were basically dry within two days. I decided to paint the leather straps across the chest and around the wrists, as well as the hair before continuing work on the rest of the figure. I didn’t have any scrap for the leather, and I changed the hair enough from the photos that I basically had to wing it there as well. It took a lithe bit of tweaking and adjusting, but in the end I think it worked out pretty well. This photo is obviously not the best, but you get the idea.