Quent Cordair Fine Art

Though many of my paintings are built up in layers, others are painted more directly. Such was the case with this painting where I wanted to keep the colors bright and clean and to emphasize the brushwork in some areas. In order to emphasize the evening light and the warm highlights playing against cool shadows, I limit my palette more than usual, emphasizing the primary colors: Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Yellow Medium, and Cadmium/Barium Red Vermillion Hue. For variety in the cool shadows I add a warm and a cool purple: Cobalt Violet Hue and Ultramarine Violet. I use no black and limit my earthtones to Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, and Raw Sienna, all of which were used sparingly. My color list is concluded with Titanium White.

After staining my canvas with a warm earth yellow and letting that dry, I transferred my prepared drawing to the canvas. I began painting the figure first, since it is the focal point of the painting. The rest of the colors and values would then be judged for their effect against the figure. Below you will see four images showing the progression of the face. I begin with light washes of earth tones to mass the shadow areas. Personally I find that this helps me to relax a little as I begin building the heavier paint. This is basically the same method as I use when painting in layers, I’m just not waiting for the stain to dry before building onto it and these washes are in the family of color to be overpainted. You will see how the color of my wash changes as I begin roughing in the dress.

Next I begin to paint the colors and values that I desire for the finished painting, starting with the darkest shadows and working toward the lights.

As I work I begin to paint some of the background color in order to work my edges wet into wet and keep them soft.

I continue to build the darks to their desired level before moving into the light areas. Since I started thinly, I can now build thicker paint as I proceed. As I develop the form, I make changes by adding more paint rather than by moving the paint around on the canvas. This helps to keep the color clean and the brushwork fresher.

Since the scene to be depicted was an Eastcoast shoreline, and I live in the midwest, I relied on photographic reference that I have taken over the years when traveling.

Here is the composite Photo developed in Photoshop.

This scene was developed through the integration of the following reference material:

A photo of my model here in Indiana + gulls photographed from a boat off of North Carolina. I added to this a black and white photo of a sailboat from a travel book.

The Shoreline was also from my in-stock photo reference material, as was the photograph of the waves.

 
All these elements were scanned, cropped, isolated, and integrated into several compositions before settling on the arrangement above. This computer generated photo montage was then used as the reference for my composition, while the individual photo sources were viewed for the details, when needed.