Quent Cordair Fine Art

Although there are four feet in this composition, there is in fact only one hand. I personally find hands to be considerably easier to paint than feet, although they are arguably equally complex, and much more expressive. I suspect this is in large part due to the fact that hands are much more often the focus of observation than are feet, and their form is consequently much more familiar. In any event, this one hand is the one area of this painting yet to be finished.

As with the last step I will restrain myself from delving into a lengthy technical explanation of the processes involved with painting the hand, but will instead include several images that should offer all the explanation necessary. The first image is a sequential depiction of the progress of the hand.

The second shows the two different palettes used, the one on the left for the roughing in phase and the one on the right for the refining and detail phase.

The third image I am including for anyone who may be wondering what exactly I mean when I refer to a ‘relatively large brush’ (typically used in the roughing in stage) as I often have in past posts. Hint: the relatively large brushes are nearer the relatively large coins.

The fourth and final image is of the finished painting. As usual, I have to say that this is not the best image of the painting. In general, the colors are slightly bled out, and the image is too bright, the contrast too low. All of these are due to limitations of my camera and the fact that the painting is not fully dry or varnished. When I have a better image (once I have the painting professionally photographed), I will post it.

Until then, enjoy this finished painting and, please, write in with your final comments and questions.

Moving on to the skirt, I think I have discussed the basic process I use to paint fabric often enough that I may already be guilty of beating a dead horse. While many may contend that beating a living horse is the more distasteful of the two activities, I am personally prepared to let the beatings stop altogether, and move on. To that end, I have included an image of the skirt as I was beginning work, and one of the entire painting once the skirt was complete.

Further comment on the process may be initiated by writing in to the Studio with a comment or question. Of greater interest (or amusement), at least to those who regularly observe me at work (namely my wife, Sara) is a new innovation in palette technology I have been pioneering, illustrated in the third image included in this update. Not only does this little trick make clean-up a breeze, it eliminates all that annoying holding associated with traditional palates.

The next major area to be completed is the shirt. I was very pleased to find that the technique I described for painting the dress worked even better with these colors than it did with the white. The raw umber gave the paint a very silky texture that was extraordinarily easy to manipulate, especially when blending the highlights into the base color. I also found that it did not tack up nearly as fast, and I had much more open time to work the paint.

In my reference photos, the model is wearing a navy blue shirt. I decided to change the color to this warmer green-brown in order to preserve the warm color scheme of the composition. Incidentally, this image is not a very good representation of the finished shirt. The surface quality of the wet paint is reflecting a lot more light in the shadow areas than it will once the paint is dry and varnished. Unfortunately, I would have to shoot the photo from a pretty dramatic angle to avoid the problem. The image of the finished piece should be much better. You will also notice that I have already begun blocking in the skirt. I wanted to test the interaction between the colors of the shirt and the skirt to make sure they were playing well together before I committed to the new shirt color.

The great painting-of-the-bare-feet extravaganza continues. The feet finished in the last step were very straightforward. Simple side-on perspective, cut off at the ankles, one mostly in shadow, all that good stuff. Not so with these two. In addition to the serious foreshortening of both feet, both legs are exposed to the knee and one leg has a bit of foreshortening of its own. Combine all of that with the size of the painting and the fast-drying pigments used to paint the flesh tones, and you have a much more complicated challenge. Of course, this only makes it more satisfying when the thing is finished, and the results are good. With this step complete, the rest of the painting should go very smoothly.

If you have been visiting the Artist’s Studio regularly over the last year, you may remember me going on about the perils of painting feet; specifically, how fine a line there is between a shapeless mass of bony flesh, and the delicate features of a woman’s foot. The day I sketched this canvas and stepped back to review the drawing, it occurred to me that almost every figure I have painted has been barefoot, wearing sandals, or cut off before the feet by the composition. This piece is obviously no exception: four bare feet, all in a row, with some serious foreshortening as an added bonus. In this image, I have completed the feet of the sister on the right. I started there simply because I am left handed, and all other things being equal, it is generally easier for me to work from right to left.