Quent Cordair Fine Art

Finishing the hair is always a favorite step for me because I never really feel like the faces are finished until then. With this painting, the effect was even more pronounced since I gave the figures such pale skin, and their hair is dark. I find the contrast quite striking, and I think it adds to the overall effect of the painting. In particular, I think it will really draw attention to the faces and facial expressions of the figures. I have made an attempt with the past few paintings to avoid over-doing the detail in non-essential areas. The hair is one of those areas where it is easy to get caught up trying to paint each strand. The extra detail really doesn’t add to the effect of the painting, and if not handled with extreme delicacy can actually make hair appear greasy. Also there is the consideration of achieving a uniform feel to the entire painting, and often very finely painted detail in the hair of a figure seems out of place with the facial features. This is a particularly important consideration on this scale, where the faces are large enough that a very high level of detail in the face would mean either painting things like pores, or over-smoothing, which gives a plastic-like feel to the skin. It isn’t easy to see what I mean in these images anyway; the camera tends to exaggerate certain brush-strokes and leave out others. As I look at the effect in the original, however, I think the detail level is just right.

This is another one of those small steps that really doesn’t need a lot of explanation. The arm and shoulder of the younger sister are finished. In general, the most time consuming areas of an arm to paint are the forearms and hands because of the more elaborate musculature in the forearms and, obviously, the complexity and expressiveness of the hands. In this case both are hidden. The real fun in this piece will be the legs and feet, but I will get to that soon enough.

I briefly mentioned during the commentary on By the Fountain that I had used a somewhat new technique to paint the dress in that painting. It basically consisted of using thick, un-diluted color and a small round brush to paint the dress in one pass. I was so pleased with the results that I decided to try the same thing here. However, as I suspected, the technique didn’t translate well to the much larger scale of this piece. The dress in this painting is almost as large as the entire By the Fountain canvas. What did end up working, with very similar results, was a hybrid of my usual technique of blending the darkest shadows and brightest highlights into a blocked in mid-tone layer, and this newer one-pass technique.

I blocked in the mid-tones with a relatively large brush as usual, although with a little more precision. I used as close to finished colors as possible, especially in those areas that were the brightest. I applied a thicker layer of paint than I normally would have, and used the small round brush to do the fine blending. Then I used the small brush and straight titanium white to blend in the more subtle details in the fabric and fine tune the colors as well as lay down the areas of pure white highlights. In the shadow areas I used the older technique exactly. The end result was a surface finish that had the same quality I liked so much from the other painting. The only drawback to the technique is that it requires the area being worked on to be completed in one sitting. I worked around that with the dress by breaking it up into several large sections. I was also able, because of the colors involved, to work with the paint for a long time before it began to tack up. It will be interesting to see how well I will be able to adapt the same basic idea to the shirt of the other figure, which will contain much more rapidly drying earth-tone pigments.

There really isn’t much to say about this new image other than the obvious: the neck and chest of the younger sister are now painted. Also, what little of the left arm can be seen in the shadow between the two sisters is complete. As far as technique is concerned, I proceeded just as was described in the previous post. The next step will be the dress, which you may have observed is the same one worn by the girl in ‘By the Fountain’. Incidentally, the model is the same as well.

What I want to focus on in this step is the really good stuff: painting the figures. Before I can do that, however, I should address one last change to the background. Once the concrete was finished, and I was able to really start to get a feel for the overall color scheme of this painting, I realized that the cityscape in the background was going to have to be modified. I had planned all along to revisit the buildings and add a little detail, but not to change the basic colors. Well, I did both. This warmer, more atmospheric take on the skyline pushes the city back and makes the skyscrapers feel taller than before. It also feels a little softer, and fits the feminine, contemplative mood of the painting a lot better.

So, the stage is all set for the figures. Here is the rough timeline for their completion. Keep in mind; the objective is to work from back to front where overlapping is concerned. This means I only have to paint finished edges once. First: the faces and exposed chest/neck areas. Second: the white dress of the figure on the left. Third: the arm of the figure on the left and the hair of both figures. Fourth: the legs of both figures and the shirt of the figure on the right. Fifth: the skirt of the right hand figure, and finally, the hand.

In this step, both faces and the neck of the older sister on the right will be painted. I have included three composite images in an effort to show the overall progress of the piece as well as the process involved in painting the figures. The first image, quite obviously, is of the entire painting at the end of this step. You can see the progress of the figures and the changes to the background. The second image shows the finished face and neck of the older sister along with an intermediate step to illustrate the blocking in of basic colors I talk about so often. The third image similarly shows the completion of the younger sister with three intermediate steps.

With these images in mind, here is a brief synopsis of the general technique involved. I begin by mixing all of the colors I will need for the area I will be working on. In this case, only flesh tones will be painted. In normal lighting conditions, most Caucasian skin tones can be mixed from titanium white, ivory black, burnt umber, cadmium red and a hint of yellow ochre. The most important thing to realize when painting skin is that it is translucent. This means that its color is very different when it is in shadow vs. direct light. It reacts in a fairly complex way to varying lighting conditions. This is one reason so many figure paintings look plastic, and why painting from life, or good reference material is so important. Once the colors are ready to go, I block in the general mid-tones. I have found that, at this point, it is far better to err on the side of too-dark than too-light. Blending white into the color is much easier to do without muddying up the whole thing. Then I lightly blend the mid-tones. Next I work with the darkest shadow colors and begin to refine the shapes and contours of the area being painted. When painting faces, this includes details like the eyes, eyebrows, nostrils, creases in the ears, etc. Finally I use white to blend in the lighter tones, finalizing the forms and adding the brightest highlights. Often the very brightest highlights have to be added after the first layers have dried.

With this painting I took a lot of extra time and care to finely adjust the expressions of the figures. Facial expressions are amazingly subtle, and even with large sized figures like these (roughly 2/3 actual size) the width of the smallest brushstroke can dramatically change the effect. Having said that, I have never been happier with the expression of a figure I have painted than I am with these two. As Thomas Edison famously said, invention (even of a painting) is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.