Quent Cordair Fine Art

The last major area of the painting to be finished was the concrete and block wall to the figure’s left.  Of major concern here is the lighting.  The figure is fairly brightly lit form two directions with the strongest source being the sunlight from the right and slightly lesser, reflected light from the left, presumably from a mirror-like glass wall behind her.  The effect is most pronounced on her legs where the back lighting is actually brighter.  It was a little disconcerting to paint and looked unnatural, at least while the left side of the painting was incomplete.  Part of the purpose for the decorative blocks was to allow a raised surface that would also be lit by the reflected light and give some visual confirmation that the lighting on the legs was correct.  It worked rather well.  Once the wall was finished, the lighting on the legs and back of the shoulders felt much more natural.

Before calling the painting done, there were a number of small touch-ups to be taken care of.  Mostly these concerned small adjustments: brightening highlights, sharpening or softening edges, cleaning up a little around the areas where the skirt had been twice wiped off, etc.  I also changed the colored stripes on the large antenna in the foreground which, over the course of the painting, had increasingly reminded me of a ten-storey candy-cane.  The final detail was the signature.

After working for so long on a single project, it is always a little hard to really accept it as finished.  Force of habit, maybe, or the fact that I could tweak and modify small details of a piece this large almost indefinitely.  It is also very gratifying to see how it all came together, especially once I am able to stop focusing on all the little details and just look at the whole picture.  In this case it took a week or two get to that point, but now I can say I think it turned out beautifully.

Thanks for joining me in the Studio.  As always, I would be happy to answer any questions or respond to any comments about this painting or any other art-related topic.

As I did with the shirt, I decided to mess around with the color of the skirt a bit to tie it in with the flowers and fit the composition a little better.  The skirt in the photos was a nice khaki-gray-green, lovely with the white shirt but a little awkward with the pink.  The bright green of the stems in the bouquet was a tempting choice, but not really as subtle/elegant as I thought it should be.  I settled on a warm, dark brown close to the color of the hair.  As you can see in the images below, it didn’t last.  As soon as I had the area in the first image blocked in, I realized it was too dark and the contrast far to distracting.  So I wiped it off.  Very carefully. In the end I decided to go with this light tan color.  I think it goes much better with the pink shirt, it’s light enough to play nicely with the extremely fair skin of the legs, and an all-around simple, elegant choice.  Of course, it doesn’t exactly tie in with the flowers, but I thought a little decorative band in the dark brown of the hair with an embroidered floral design in the green of the stems would take care of that.

After all the fussing around with colors and wiping off of paint, I only managed to get a little of the skirt finished in the first sitting.

Here it is at the end of the second sitting.

And, finally, the finished skirt.

I think it turned out rather well. At some point since the completion of the shirt, it seems I must have also painted the letter for which the painting will eventually be named.

In the original scrap photos, the model is wearing a white shirt. After some consideration, I decided to change the color to the same light pink of the flowers in the bouquet. I wanted the figure to stand out a little more from the rather complex backdrop of the clouds, and the pink seemed like a nice choice. I like the tie-in with the bouquet since the girl is sort of the flower among the buildings. Once the shirt was pained, I finished the last few strands of hair over the shoulders. There’s something quite satisfying about no longer having a disembodied head floating in the clouds.

Before moving on to the skirt, I had a go at the flowers. I think a quick word about symbolism might be appropriate here. I’ve never been a fan of the sort of symbolic painting that requires a degree in art history or a dictionary of historical meanings in order to unravel some hidden message. I selected the flowers in the bouquet for purely aesthetic reasons. However, I knew sooner or later the symbolic meaning of the flowers would be questioned so I looked them up. After all, it would never do to find out a year after completing the piece that I had inadvertently painted a lovely scene of a beautiful girl surrounded by towers of concrete and glass who for some reason happens to be holding a ‘lost-love/congrats on the leprosy’ bouquet. So what kind of flowers are they? I suppose the obvious ‘guy’ answer would be that they are pink and white flowers. Actually, they are supposed to be Amaryllis (the pink ones), Calla Lillis (the long white and green ones), and Freesia. A little research tuned up these common meanings associated with each flower. Turns out I got lucky. Calla Lillis mean beauty, Amaryllis mean pride and Freesia are for innocence. Couldn’t have chosen better for the composition.

Ah yes, the feet.  It should be no surprise to you veteran Studio visitors that I have, yet again, composed an image in which the figure is barefoot.  It isn’t that I intentionally set out to design barefoot compositions as that they seem to me to convey a comfortable intimacy in compositions where the figure is deep in their own thoughts.  Have I made too big a deal of the feet in the past few installments of the studio?   They really are just so rewarding to paint, possibly because they can so easily go so wrong.  In this case the extreme brightness of the reflected light (as bright if not brighter than the primary) made for a particularly interesting sort of mid-leg/foot shadow which had me constantly second guessing my value scheme.  Once completed, however, I was quite pleased.  I suspect that the effect will be even better once the concrete and stone wall behind is complete to add some context to the lighting. I will have to be patient, however, as I intend to finish the shirt and the skirt first.

It’s a pretty natural progression to move from the face to the arms and hands. Next will be the legs and feet. Not only is all the flesh overlapped by the clothing, but I find it helps to do all of it while I’m ‘in the groove.’

I really enjoy painting hands. They can be almost as expressive as a face, and have a great deal of effect on the overall body language of a figure. Not surprisingly, they can also be about as tricky to get right as the face, though there is not nearly as much concern with exact likeness. The bright, reflected light issues I dealt with when working on the face applied here as well. Fortunately I had the palette worked out in advance this time.